It did not. It leapt--a white consuming blaze that seemed to roar the louder with the wind of his going. For here, at last, he held in his very hand a damning proof of the guilt he had so long suspected. In the fierce triumph of its possession, he forgot caution, policy--everything but the lust to crush under a savage heel the reptile he had warmed and cherished at his hearth. No doubt that little rebellious emotion we wot of was reacting upon itself with a double hate of its own weakness. He writhed to think that he had ever admitted it to his counsels; but his revenge should be proportionate. An evil chance drove him upon his victim on the very threshold of the hall; and he had him by the throat before the poor wretch could so much as guess his purpose. “Here, here!” he yelled, holding up the stone. “I have the proof at length. You dog--you currish hypocrite, to be in the league against me!” The man’s face had gone of a mortal whiteness. He struggled feebly. “Master!” he gasped. The other’s fury came to a bestial head. He threw down the stone and struck the poor creature on the mouth. “Silence!” he shrieked. “I know it all!--I’ve heard all the truth, I tell you. You shall swing for it, by God! You shall----” Mad to give expression to his ungovernable rage, he flung himself upon the shivering form, and seized and tore it along the passage, while it pleaded to him in hoarse terror, and clutched vainly at whatever projections came in its way. Suddenly, conscious of his purpose, it gave up a shrill scream, and writhed frantically in his hands. “No, no!” cried the man. “Not there--not there! Give me time to speak! Oh, my God! I shall go mad of the horror of that place!” They had struggled to within a few feet of the “Priest’s Hole.” The flap yet remained open as Mr. Tuke had left it. “You will go in,” panted the latter, beating under his victim by mere furious force of muscle. “You will go in, and lie and rot till I can carry you to Winton Gaol. Down with you!” In his stumbling wrestle with the half-fainting creature, he twisted about, saw something, and let go his prey for a moment. Whimple fell back as if he were dying, and on the instant the other struck up and caught Darda by the wrist. A thin flash of steel went above their heads, and there was the sound of a knife ringing on the boards. There was no blood-letting; but the moral was as if there had been. The fever of passion in the man was subdued to a worser coldness of cruelty. “Not yet!” he said, in a low voice, his eyes holding her like evil magnets. “Not yet, you pretty animal!” In a moment he leapt at her, lifted her light form in his arms, and, clapping his hand over her shrill voluble mouth, bore her to the front of the house, and, rolling her without, closed and bolted the door upon her. Then he returned with smiling lips to the other. He lay as he had left him--cowering, exhausted, half-stupid with terror already, it seemed.