"I looked about for a weapon--for the hand to strike. This I found in Jeremy Orrin. It was at the Tryst of Longtown, whither I had gone to deliver a web. There I saw a limber youth, very dark, turning somersaults on a scrap of carpet. He spread out his hands and walked on them. There was hair on the palms. The thumb was as long as the fingers, and he raised himself upon them as on steel springs. I saw him take a byre 'grape'--or fork of three thick prongs--and bend the three into one by the mere strength of one hand. "Then that set me thinking of other things that these fingers might be taught to do. So, in a little inn, I made the tumbler's acquaintance, and I could see that at first he eyed me curiously. I could read such looks. I knew the wickedness that was in his heart. He meant to murder me on my way home! "But first I gave him to drink as much as he would. Suddenly I turned my pockets inside out and let him feel the linings of my coat--there in that lighted room, to prove that he would not be twopence halfpenny the richer by the transaction. Then, leaning forward as if jesting, I made a proposition. By himself, I said, such a man could do but little. He was but a tracked beast without a den. See what it had brought him to, tumbling on a carpet for a living, and hungry withal! I would give him safety, a position, the high road between two market towns, neither of them yet reached by the railway, running before our very door. "Finally, on the doorstep of the Red Lion, holding unstably by either lintel, a warning to all sober men like myself, I pointed out Riddick of Langbarns, who, as I knew, had that day sold his two-year-old horses to the tune of eight hundred pounds! "Jeremy Orrin and I left the lighted town behind us. I am well aware even then that I put my life in his hands--how terrible was my danger I did not know. For the young man's wayward madness was as yet hidden from me, as from all the world except his elder sister. At the Windy Slap, a narrow wind-swept gully, and a wild enough scene at the best of times, I came out suddenly, and speaking to Riddick, who was on horseback, asked him civilly if he would need any sheets or tablecloths that year. For that I was making out my winter's orders. He knew me at once, and bade me get out of his sight for an arrant self-seeking miser that would keep a shivering man from a good glass of toddy at his own fireside!