"Now the point I want to make clear to you is that the man's mad. I'm not a clever chap. I don't know any of your medical theories. I've never had any leaning that way, but I take it that the moment that any one crosses the division between sanity and insanity it means that they can control their brain no longer, that they are dominated by some desire or ambition or lust or terror that nothing can stop, no fear of the law, of public shame, of losing social caste. Crispin is mad, and Hesther, whom I love more than anything in this world and the next, is in his hands completely and absolutely. They go abroad to-morrow morning where no one can touch them. "The time's been so short, and I've not been sufficiently clever to give you any clear idea of the man himself. I've got practically no facts. You can't say that his stroking an old woman's neck is a fact that proves anything. All the same I believe you've seen enough yourself to know that it isn't all imagination, and that the girl is in terrible peril. My God, sir," the boy's voice was shaking, "before the war there were all sorts of things that didn't seem possible, we knew that they couldn't exist outside the books of the story-tellers. But the war's changed all that. There's nothing too horrible, nothing too beastly, nothing too bad to be true--yes, and nothing too fine, nothing too sporting. "And this thing is quite simple. There are those two madmen and my girl in their hands, and only to-night to get her out of them. "I must tell you something more," he went on more quietly. "I've been making desperate attempts to see her, and at the same time to prevent either of those devils from seeing _me._ I saw her twice, once in the grounds of the White Tower, once on the beach below the house. Neither time would she listen to me. I could see that she was miserable, altogether changed, but all that she would say was that she was married and that she must go through with what she had begun. "She begged me to go away and leave Treliss. Her one fear seemed to be lest Crispin should find out I was there and do something to me. "Her terror of him was dreadful to witness--but she would tell me nothing. I hung about the place and made a friend of a fisherman he had up there working on the place--Jabez Marriot--you saw him on the hill to-day. "He's a fine fellow. He's only been working on the grounds, had nothing to do with inside the house, but he didn't love the Crispins any better than I did, and he had lost his heart to Hesther. She spoke to him once or twice, and he would do anything for her. I sent letters to her through him: she replied to me in the same way, but they were all to the same effect, that I was to go away quickly lest Crispin should do something to me, that she wasn't being badly treated and that there was nothing to be done.