“’Tis the short for Devil’s-rope,--that’s what it is; the cursed bind-weed that will honeycomb a county from an inch of root if you give it rein. The story goes that, when they dug the foundations, it lay thick in the soil as macaroni in a dish.” “That’s odd enough; and an ominous name for the last tenant by your showing. What was his history that you make a secret of?” “Tut! ’tis no secret. Did you hear that?--the wind ’ll blow the casement in. ’Tis no secret; but I was only a lad of five when they found him hanging on the downs, and so can give you little but the fruits of hearsay.” “And what are they?” “As dry as apple-johns by this date. Fill your glass. The fellow’s name was Turk, I say; and he looked his name.--Zounds! ’tis like his ghost ravenin’ with fury to get the grip of us.--He must ’a been an ugly beggar; for I can remember him plain as plain for all I was only five years old when he was found swingin’.” “What was he like?” “Like? Like a gurgoyle on a church--a face to sweat o’ nights with thinking on. A murderous-looking caitiff, sir, with red stubble under his jasey and a bloody long tuck at his side. Yet I can mind me of a look in his eyes--or in one of ’em; for t’other was fixed in his head and chalky like a boiled cod’s--that wasn’t all of the rest. ’Twas fear, or sufferin’--or compound of both; and it lessened the fright I stood in of meetin’ him.” “Was he always there--at ‘Delsrop,’ I mean, in your early memory of it?” “Save us, no. The place belonged to the Woodruffs up to ’77, when it came into the market. The new owner wasn’t in possession--no, not a year. He turned up sudden--was there on a day, with his black-bodin’ face; and nobody knew where he’d come from or what was his business in life. They didn’t find out then or afterwards. He kept himself to himself; received no visitors and wanted none; lived his days solitary, shut up like a miser; and didn’t so much as weed the gravel of his drive.” “And so disappeared?” “Disappeared? Not he. He was a landmark to every traveller for months to come. I mind the mornin’ well--ah! even through this lapse of time--that young Peterson, our landreeve, rode over to ‘Chatters,’ with a face like whey, and said as how Mr. Turk had been found murdered and hangin’ in the chains on Stockbridge downs.” “Hanging?” “Aye! There they’d strung him up that did the deed; for he’d been stabbed first--nigh a dozen angry wounds that had sucked at the steel like mouths--and then set to dangle for a jest to the daws.” “And when they ran the rogues to earth?” “They never did, sir--they never did. To this day the man’s fate is locked up in the mystery of his life.” “But at the inquest----”