’Whither? To the Ring o’ Bells. There be no one there to-night, all be away to Chimsworthy at the Haysel. You sit down again, and I will give you some cherry cordial.’ He obeyed sulkily. ’You can’t go to dance at Chimsworthy, because you be here at Langford, and there’s no dancing and merry-making here. But wait till you’re at Coombe Park, and then you’ll have junketings and harvest-homes and dances when you will. That’ll be a rare life.’ He said nothing, but thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked moodily before him. ’Shall I tell you now who’ll find you the money?’ He did not speak. ’Wellon will.’ ’What?’ he looked up in surprise. ’Ay! old Wellon as was gibbeted, he will.’ Charles laughed contemptuously. ’You are talking folly. I always thought you mad.’ ’Did you ever hear of the Hand of Glory?’ ’No, never.’ ’I wonder what became of Wellon’s hand—the hand that throttled Mary Rundle, and stuck the knife into the heart of Jane, and brought down their aunt wi’ a blow of the fist. That hand was a mighty hand.’ ’Wellon was hung in chains, and fell to dust.’ ’But not the hand. Such a hand as that was too precious. Did you never hear it was cut off, and the body swung for years without it?’ ’No, I did not.’ ’It was so.’ ’What good was it to anyone?’ ’It was worth pounds and pounds.’ ’As a curiosity?’ ’No, as a Hand of Glory. It were washed in mother’s milk to a child base-born, and smoked in the reek of gallows-wood, and then laid with tamarisk from the sea, and vervain, and rue, and bog-bean.’ ’Well, what then?’ ’Why, then, sure it’s a Hand of Glory.’ She paused, then struck her hand across her forehead, ’and grass off the graves of them as it killed—I forgot to say that was added.’ ’What can such a hand do?’ ’Everything. If I had it here and set it up on the mantelshelf, and set a light to the fingers, all would flame blue, and then every soul in the house would sleep except us two, and we might ransack the whole place and none would stir or hinder or see. And if we let the hand flame on, they would lie asleep till we were far away beyond their reach.’ ’If you had this Hand of Glory, I wouldn’t help you to use it,’ said Charles, writhing on his seat.