He lounged, idly looking while she revealed her treasures; and she stepped back with an expression of covert triumph on her face. “Do you know what they are?” she said. “Name them to me, all.” He gave an involuntary exclamation of repulsion; for verily it was a gruesome collection that met his gaze. Many old mummified skins of bird and beast, with beak and claw still adhering to them; yellowing teeth of cattle and skulls of small-deer picked out of brake and warren; the sloughed skin of an adder; the desiccated presentment of a cat with a mouse in its jaws, found behind a stove; amongst them all, carefully arranged, a host of common pebbles, selected for some distinguishing mark, and even withered roots and potatoes, that accident had embellished with some grotesque resemblance to twisted limbs or faces--such were the principal features of Darda’s museum. There was yet another treasure that stood prominently forward of the rest in a place of honour--a human skull--no less--with wisps of gritty hair yet clinging to the scalp, and the flesh of the face withered to a corrugated substance like bark. The baronet gave out a note of extreme disgust. The eye-holes of the dead horror were wrinkled like a toad’s back, and one of them was bulged with a chalky lump that, gleaming through the slit, looked as if the last dying terror of the soul that once inhabited had petrified it. Seeing his expression, the girl gave an eldritch laugh, and clipped it in the bud. “That is Dennis,” she said, listening. A step came up the stairway. Mr. Tuke strode into the passage without, and met the brother approaching. “She has been showing me those abominations,” he said. “They must be cleared out, every one of them. I won’t have the ugly rubbish in my house. You hear me?” He understood the man to give a little gasping, nervous response, and walked on fuming. At the stair-head he turned again. Whimple had not moved, and his face was drawn and white. “Where did she pick up that filthy relic?” said he sternly. “The head, sir?” “The head, of course. There is no need to misapprehend me.” The other seemed to have some difficulty in replying. More than once he cleared his husky throat; and when at length he spoke, it was in a strained, mumbling voice. “She wanders far afield. It was at the foot of the gallows on the downs she found it fallen, and brought it home.” “Lately?” “Oh, sir, no. It was the first year of our coming.” “Well, it must be got rid of. I won’t have it here.” The words had hardly left his lips, when Darda sprang into the passage, her eyes blazing like a maniac’s. “It shan’t go!” she shrieked--“it shan’t! it shan’t! Dennis, kill him!” Her brother closed frantically with the mad creature, and sought to still her cries. He looked imploringly, in the midst of his struggling, at his master.