“She gave me a push and sprang toward ye, but she never reached ye, for I grabbed her by the throat—frightened at what I’d already done, and the heat of the room had made a madman of me—and choked her till she grew purple in the face, and then threw her from me. She stumbled, caught her foot in a rug, and fell. I laughed as she went over. Her head hit on the sharp corner of the stove with a sound I’ll never forget till I die, and then she, too, lay still and white on the floor afore me.” CHAPTER XXVII. JACK’S STORY CONTINUED. When the man had reached the part of his story recorded in the preceding chapter, he was greatly agitated for several moments, as if the memory of that dreadful time was even now, after the lapse of more than twenty year, more than he could bear, while Geoffrey, too, felt as if he could hardly sit there and listen to the remainder of the fearful tale. “The horror of it all sobered me a’most as quick as if I’d been struck by lightning,” Jack at length resumed, pulling himself together with an effort. “I don’t know how long I stood there, lookin’ down on them two that I believed I’d sent out o’ world without a moment’s warning. Then I slunk out o’ the house, hardly knowin’ what I did, and went and hid myself in the barn. I must have gone to sleep, or fell into a stupor from the liquor I’d drank, for I didn’t know anything more till the roosters set up such a crowing that nobody could have slept. I never could tell ye what the horror of that wakin’ was, sir, and it’s a’most like livin’ it over again to tell it,” groaned the man, with a shudder. “It was only about two in the mornin’, but the moon was shinin’, and it was most as light as day. I crept out into the yard and listened; there wasn’t a sound except those roosters, and every crow sounded like a knell o’ doom in my ears, and made my flesh creep with fear. “I stole up to the house and looked in at the kitchen window. I couldn’t help it—something drove me to it, though I shivered at every step. There they lay, just as they fell, with the light still burnin’, and everything just as I’d left it. But, while I stood there the little shaver stirred and moaned, and my heart leaped straight into my throat, near about, chokin’ me at the sight. It gave me hope—p’raps after all I hadn’t murdered ’em, and they might be brought to. I rushed in, took the boy up, and laid him on the bed in the bedroom just off the kitchen. He moaned all the time, till I got a wet cloth and put it on his head, when he grew quiet and dropped off into a stupor again. Then I went to her—my girl—Margery—the woman I’d sworn to love and take care of till I died, and who had done me nothin’ but kindness ever since we first met.