And where was Jabez? He heard Tabitha’s cry, but it came from the wrong side, and he had sense to know was useless to save, unless he could withstand the current till help came round. But the strong stream was bearing him on against his will. Suddenly he bethought him of the dairy steps, and, with a stroke of his left arm, swerved towards the hoary building looming through the twilight. One moment later, and the steps had been passed, not to be recovered, for the current was stronger than he; but that providentially abrupt turn, and a few skilful strokes, brought him upon them. Literally upon them, for the water was within a step or two of the door. With difficulty he obtained a footing, they were so slippery. Once above the water, he hammered at the door and called, but his voice was weakened by exertion and the shivering consequent on cold, wet, clinging garments. Again and again he knocked and called, but everyone was out in the quadrangle, or away in search of him, and no one heard. He had been excited and over-heated in his prolonged struggle with his persecutors, and, short as was the distance he swam, his efforts to stem the overmastering current had exhausted him. Cold and exposure did the rest. He sank on the topmost step with his head against the door, in the angle it formed with the wall, his feet in the water; and there he lay, too faint to respond when Dr. Stone’s voice fell on his ear as on that of a dreamer. His dark robe, his position, the jutting wall—all contributed to hide him from the poor rays of the one oil-lamp which was flashed along the stream to find him. And there he might have lain and died had not Nancy, for lack of a boy at hand to wait on her, gone down to the cellar for milk for the boys’ supper. As she filled the wooden piggin she had taken with her, she fancied she heard a moan, and listening breathless, heard another, and another, from the outside of a door which was (to her thought) inaccessible to mortal. Down went the piggin and the milk (she was not a strong-minded woman, and it was a superstitious age), up the steps she stumbled in her fright, crying— “Oh! theer’s a boggart in th’ dairy!—theer’s a boggart!” Dr. Stone and his companions came in at the porch as she fled upwards towards the kitchen. The firelight gleaming on her frightened face caught his attention. Half fainting, she repeated her exclamation, adding— “It moaned like summat wick.” “Moaned, did you say? Goodness! If it should be——” Not stopping to finish his sentence, he snatched a light from the table, and was unbolting the cellar-door before the governor or anyone else could comprehend his movements. They understood well enough when he came back into their midst, burdened with the limp, dripping form of Jabez, white and insensible, and depositing him on a settle near the kitchen fire, cried out for restoratives.