I don't know what might have happened. To me it was like a nightmare till we found ourselves in the open courtyard again. This had seemed creepy enough to me before. But now it was just like our own back green, as homelike and as pleasant, with the open air and the waving woods and all. Within the barn we heard elricht squeaks and cries, like those of bats. But outside the door, holding the heavy curtain back, so that we could get out easily, stood a tall, masculine woman with gray, smoothly brushed hair, dressed in a black blouse and skirt that had something under them which looked like the haircloth covering of the chairs in our second best parlour at home--the kind my father sits in and smokes over his books and cash-box. She was the woman with the short skirt we had seen watering the lilies when we looked across the black and oily moat. "This is Miss Orrin, my housekeeper," said Elsie's grandfather automatically. "Aphra Orrin!" said the lady, with a prim intonation, tossing her head like one hurt in her pride, "one who hath been raised up to be a mother to the orphan and the shelterless, to avenge the witless and those at whom fools make a mock! _Be quiet, you there!_" She sent the door of the barn clashing into its place with her foot, and with the click of the well-oiled wards the screeching behind it redoubled. The tall woman sighed and folded her arms across her breast. There was a certain weary dignity about her, and at first I could not believe that she was really out of her mind, as all in Breckonside averred. "They are worse than usual to-day," she said, with a careless nod of the head in the direction of the barn, "but that will teach them. They shall stay there till I come and fetch them out! No food for such as they!" She turned about and called hurriedly: "Jeremy! Jeremy!" Then the big black man with the ringlets, the onyx eyes and gipsy's skin, came bounding toward us. He seemed to arrive from the direction of the moat, but from much farther round and nearer to the house than the bridge by which we had crossed. He was grinning and holding his hands behind him, like a child who fears to be punished. I soon noticed that he was far more afraid of his sister than he had been of Mr. Stennis and his riding whip. "Show your hands!" The tall woman spoke in a tone of command. Jeremy stood grinning before her. Then quite suddenly he began to cry. Big tears rolled down his face. "I haven't--I haven't, indeed, Aphra!" he whimpered. "I have only been sailing boats on the moat! Indeed, I have!" "_Show your hands!_" She spoke so shortly that the great, cleanly built powerful giant fairly quaked before her. "I will--I will!" he repeated. "Yes, Aphra!"