“In brief, Gridd goes to grid-iron,” flashed a grim shadow in the corner. “Tophet has him, mad-blazing, mad-dancing with flame of unimaginable tints. Basting with pitch and fire. Thunder and bolt above; blackness of Erebus beneath. And so ‘good-night’ to Gridd.” THE JACKY-TOAD He was sitting upon the skull of a dead horse, thinking of nothing in particular, when out of the great nocturnal silence there came the sound of a human footstep. Whereupon he leapt upright and waved his lantern frantically. This he did because the wanderer was evidently night-foundered and lost upon the moorland, and it seemed probable that, observing the light, he or she would approach it. Now that strange blue flicker of flame rose and fell and danced above a quaking-bog--a hideous place where emerald mosses hid the black slime beneath, and where, at the margins of the danger, tussocks and little peat tumuli gave foothold for heather, for cotton grass, and for rushes. “I’m coming!” cried a voice. “I am so glad somebody’s found me at last.” [Illustration: “You’re nothing but a puff of phosphuretted hydrogen” “GORMED IF I DIDN’T THINK I’D GOT ’E!”] Another moment and a small girl felt the sudden uprising of deadly coldness about her feet and heard the devilish hiss and chatter of the quaking-bog as it sucked and shivered and opened its black mouth to swallow her. But she was light as a feather, active as a bird. She struggled back, fell, clutched a stout mound of heather, then another, and so dragged herself out of danger. “Gormed if I didn’t think I’d got ’e!” squeaked a voice at her elbow, and looking round the child saw a tiny monster, four inches high, black as coal, hairy as a spider, more horrible than any nightmare. He peered into her face with eyes like hot coals, and waved his lantern over his head. “You horrid little cruel wretch!” cried the child. “Don’t think I’m a bit frightened of you, because I’m not.” Which was perfectly true, for the speaker had a father who knew everything by its name, and the reason for everything, and the cause of everything, and what everything was made of, and why. Therefore the advantage in the present instance lay wholly with her, after she had escaped; because there cannot be any real comparison between a highly-educated little lady of nine years old and an ignorant country bumpkin of a Jacky-Toad, born and bred in a Devon quagmire. And if you never heard of a Jacky-Toad, know that he is one with your Will-o’-the-Wisp, or your Jack-a-Lantern, or your Marsh Galloper, or the _Ignis Fatuus_ of the scholar. “Ban’t you afeared?” asked the imp. “No--not now. You’re only a naughty, ugly Will-o’-the-Wisp.” “I be a Jacky-Twoad, I be.” “You may call yourself what you like; you’re nothing but a puff of phosphuretted hydrogen, because I’ve heard my father say so.” “Aw! I ban’t very well eddicated myself.”