I was looking all about, you may be sure, and a little way off under the shadow of the great broken-down gates of the orchard, I saw a heap lie darkly, curiously loose and stretched out, a kind of wisp in the form of a man, something like a Guy Fawkes dragged through water instead of fire. I pointed to it. The head, to my eyes at least, still glowed faintly phosphorescent. "_That!_" I said briefly. "That," said Elsie calmly, "is Mad Jeremy!" I started up on my elbow in great astonishment. "Then he wasn't dead after all, when he jumped into the water from the top of the tower the morning of the burning?" "It seems not--it was only a little habit of his," said Elsie calmly, "but he is now! _I_ killed him." "Why?" "Because he would have killed you, if I had not! He was waiting for you to pass. Only, as it happened, I had been waiting longest. I knew you were in the sulks, and came to find you. Besides--he killed my grandfather." "But your grandfather----" "No matter--he _was_ my grandfather!" "And what did you kill him with?" I was sitting up now, quite myself, and intensely curious. Elsie always says that merely wanting to know will restore me quicker than a whole apothecaries' hall. She affected not to hear. "You can't do without me after all!" she taunted. "I know." "Don't you mind having killed him?" I asked. As for me I should have been fairly cut out of my mind if I had done as much. "Of course I care," she answered; "didn't I tell you he killed my grandfather?" Then it was that I began to believe that after all there was something in blood. And I resolved, there and then, that when Elsie and I were married I should behave, and give her no cause to take an odd shot at me. "But what did you do it with?" It was the second time of asking. "Dum-dum!" said she. "What!" I cried; "then my father gave you that beautiful long-barrelled Webley he took from me?" "Well, don't sulk about it--there's no time!" she cried. "Of course he gave it to me--as soon as you had gone out--said I might need it, with all the excitement among the Bewick pit folk. So I had a special pocket made for it, and I have carried it about ever since. This is the first chance I've had, though!" I looked at her in astonishment. This was the girl who was afraid of mice. "But don't you mind--_that_?" I pointed over my shoulder at the heap under the archway. The moon was creeping upward towards the zenith, and the light had now illuminated the dark face and wet, snaky curls of that which had been Mad Jeremy. I went nearer to look at him. I wanted to make sure that he was indeed dead. The bullet had entered a trifle behind one ear, traversed the base of the skull, and come out by the opposite temple. This time there was no mistake--the creature was dead. Two little crosses of white caught my eye, one over each bullet hole. She saw me bend down to examine them.