"Gently, young sir." He waved his hand towards the encircling moors. "We have feasted _more Homerico_, and in Homer, you remember the host allowed his guest fourteen days before asking that question. Permit me to delay the answer only till I have poured libation on the turf here. Ah! I perceive the whisky is exhausted: but water shall suffice. May I trouble you--my joints are stiff--to fill your drinking-cup from the brook at your feet?" I took the cup from his hands and stooped over the water. As I did so, he leapt on me like a cat from behind. I felt a hideous blow on the nape of the neck: a jagged flame leapt up: the sunshine turned to blood--then to darkness. With hands spread out, I stumbled blindly forward and fell at full length into the beck. When my senses returned, I became aware, first that I was lying, bound hand and foot and securely gagged, upon the turf; secondly, that the horses were still tethered, and standing quietly at the foot-bridge; and, thirdly, that my companion had resumed his position on the boulder, and there sat watching my recovery. Seeing my eyes open, he raised his hat and addressed me in tones of grave punctilio. "Believe me, sir, I am earnest in my regret for this state of things. Nothing but the severest necessity could have persuaded me to knock the son of my late esteemed friend over the skull and gag his utterance with a stone--to pass over the fact that it fairly lays my sense of your hospitality under suspicion. Upon my word, sir, it places me in a cursedly equivocal position!" He took a pinch of snuff, absorbed it slowly, and pursued. "It was necessary, however. You will partly grasp the situation when I tell you that my name is Teague--the Reverend William Teague, Doctor of Divinity, and formerly incumbent of Bleakirk-on-Sands." His words explained much, though not everything. The circumstances which led to the Reverend William's departure from Bleakirk had happened some two years before my birth: but they were startling enough to supply talk in that dull fishing village for many a long day. In my nursery I had heard the tale that my companion's name recalled: and if till now I had felt humiliation, henceforth I felt absolute fear, for I knew that I had to deal with a madman.