"Joan--Joan? In hell--ragin', roastin' hell--screechin', I lay, like a cat in a bonfire. 'Tis lies they'll tell 'e 'bout her. She weern't drownded--never. The devil set sail 'pon auld Chirgwin's hayrick, so they sez, an' her sailed 'long wi' en. But 'theer rings, they was so high that they was dreadful, an' theer rings weer full o' eyes round about.' She'm damned, my son--called, not chosen. 'The crop o' the bunch' they called her--the crop o' the devil's bunch she was--no cheel o' my gettin'. Her'll burn for a million years or better--all along o' free-traadin'. Free-traadin'! curse 'em--why doan't they call it smugglin' an' have done?" Joe Noy had fallen back. He forgot to breathe, then Nature performed the necessary act, and in a moment of the madman's silence his listener sucked a long loud breath. "Oh, my gracious Powers, what's fallen 'pon en?" he groaned aloud. "God's strong, but the devil's stronger, you mind. Us must pray to the pit now. 'Our devil which art in hell'--Ha! ha! ha! He hears fast enough, an' pokes up the black horns of en at the first smell o' prayer. Not but what my Tom's aloft, in the main-top o' paradise. I seed en pass 'pon a black wave wi' a gray foamin' crest. An' the white sawl o' my bwoy went mountin' and mountin' in shape o' a seabird. Men dies hard in salt water, you mind. It plays wi' 'em like a cat wi' a mouse. But 'tis all wan: 'The Lard is King an' sitteth 'tween the cherubims,' though the airth's twitchin', same as a crab bein' boiled alive, all the time." Noy looked round him wildly and was about to leave the cottage. Then it struck him that the man's wife and daughter could not be far off. What blasting catastrophe had robbed him of his mind the sailor knew not; but once assured of the fact that Michael Tregenza was hopelessly insane, Noy lent no credit to any of his utterances, and of course failed to dimly guess at those facts upon which his ravings were based. Indeed he heard little after the first rambling outburst, for his own thoughts were busy with the problems of Tregenza's fate.