"You viper!" he shrieked. "How dare you accuse me of crime--you whose mother would have died in jail but for my forbearance? Have you ever seen me set my foot upon a worm? Look at my fruit and flowers, look at my home, without a spot or blemish to mar its neatness and propriety. Can a man who loves these things stomach the destruction of a man, much less of a silly, yawping boy? Lucetta, you are mad!" "Mad or sane, my accusation will have its results, Mr. Trohm. I believe too deeply in your guilt not to make others do so." "Ah," said he, "then you have not done so yet? You believe this and that, but you have not told any one what your suspicions are?" "No," she calmly returned, though her face blanched to the colorlessness of wax, "I have not said what I think of you yet." Oh, the cunning that crept into his face! "She has not said. Oh, the little Lucetta, the wise, the careful little Lucetta!" "But I will," she cried, meeting his eye with the courage and constancy of a martyr, "though I bring destruction upon myself. I will denounce you and do it before the night has settled down upon us. I have a lover to avenge, a brother to defend. Besides, the earth should be rid of such a monster as you." "Such a monster as I? Well, my pretty one,"--his voice grown suddenly wheedling, his face a study of mingled passions,--"we will see about that. Come just a step nearer, Lucetta. I want to see if you are really the little girl I used to dandle on my knee." They were now near the gateway. They had been moving all this time. His hand was on the curb of the old well. His face, so turned that it caught the full glare of the setting sun, leaned toward the girl, exerting a fascinating influence upon her. She took the step he asked, and before we could shriek out "Beware!" we saw him bend forward with a sudden quick motion and then start upright again, while her form, which but an instant before had stood there in all its frail and inspired beauty, tottered as if the ground were bending under it, and in another moment disappeared from our appalled sight, swallowed in some dreadful cavern that for an instant yawned in the smoothly cut lawn before us, and then vanished again from sight as if it had never been. A shriek from my whistle mingled with a simultaneous cry of agony from Loreen. We heard Mr. Gryce rush from behind us, but we ourselves found it impossible to stir, paralyzed as we were by the sight of the old man's demoniacal delight. He was leaping to and fro over the turf, holding up his fingers in the red sunset glare.