“Upon the Moreton road as he comes home-along!” he said. Then the wretch turned to hurry away. At the first step, however, he stopped and stood as still as a statue, for he had heard what was hidden from the ears of the rest. Then they too caught the sound of footsteps and a murmuring in the night. Richard remained without moving, and his eyes glared into the dark, and his jaw had fallen. Then, taking shape and coming slowly into the radius of lantern light, there moved a woman and a boy. Jane Stanberry approached, holding Davey by the hand; and at sight of her Richard Daccombe screamed out his shattered senses, and fled as one possessed of an evil spirit. In vain they made search for him by night and day, and it was not until more than eight-and-forty hours had passed that they found him wandering in the great central loneliness insane. There they ministered to him, and brought him home; and time so dealt with him that he sank into a harmless and haunted idiocy—a horror for his father, a knife in his mother’s heart. Now it happened that Richard’s brother, upon the keeper’s departure from the Case House on a day already noted, had descended from his pine tree, made close investigation of the elder’s deed, and guessed that such preparations were directed against one man. From that day until the time of the catastrophe, David kept silent watch upon all occasions when Jane and Anthony Maybridge met there. Hidden within a dry drain some ten yards distant, he had played sentinel until the night of Richard’s revenge. Then he had crept from his cover the moment the other’s back was turned, reached the smouldering touchwood, and with amazing courage extinguished it. Afterward, releasing the girl as quickly as possible, and bidding her run for her life to the shelter of a grinding mill two hundred yards distant, he had once more set the rotten wood on fire and hastened after Jane. She, mystified and indignant, was also conscious that the boy must be obeyed, and so fled as he ordered her. Yet both would have perished but for their protection behind the stout ruin of the grinding mill. And now, the fear of death upon their faces, they hurried trembling home, and Nemesis came with them. * * * To-day a black-bearded man, with brown eyes and a mouth always open, shambles about the blasted heart of the old powder-mill. He babbles to himself with many a frown and pregnant nod and look askance; sometimes he watches the trout in the river; sometimes he plucks feverishly at the blossoms of the broom and spearwort and other yellow flowers. These he stamps underfoot as one stamps fire. Davey is his brother’s keeper, and shall be seen always at hand. At his word Richard Daccombe obeys like a dog—shrinks with fear if the boy is angry, fawns and laughs when the boy is kind. JOSEPH “I do love they stuckit plants,” said Mr. Joseph Hannaford.