"Fool, or no fool, Jack, you have done what none of the rest of us had the wit or pluck to do. But he will kill you, if ever he gets well enough to do it." "If I live till he kills me, I shall be a very old man," Jack replied, with immense scornfulness. He had now stowed away his properties, some in his pockets, and some in a sack, which he slung over his shoulder, and stood ready for flight. We shook hands, and he said-- "Luke Barnby knows the way to my lodge." Desirous as I was to return to the vicarage, it took me a long time to do so, for everybody was in the main street, talking and laughing over the sudden break-up of the meeting summoned by the commissioner. Here I met one who had not been present, and wished to hear my account of the affair; there another, who had been present, and wanted to go over it again. A knot of young fellows dragged me into the White Hart, where they drank Daft Jack's health, and the health of the man who had "put him up to the trick." For no reason they had given me the credit of the device, nor did my plain denial quite remove their belief that I had a hand in the business. At last I got away from them, and found all quiet at the vicarage. It had been agreed to act on the suggestion of the chief constable the following day, and he had engaged to protect the house during the night. Anna, as I had come to name her to myself, had recovered from the shock of the previous evening, and looked charming even with a cross of plaister on her brow. After I had told the true and full story of Daft Jack's achievement, the doctor and the parson prosed alternately, the one describing all the venomous insects known to man, I should think; the other giving instances from history, sacred and profane, of their intervention in human affairs, and seeming to have pleasure in recounting the torture inflicted on an unlucky wight, whose name I forget, by an enemy who had him smeared with honey, and exposed to the stings of bees and wasps. The vicar was too good a Christian to rejoice in the sufferings of the commissioner, but I am sure he got some kind of consolation in the very particular description which he made of the torments of the other man. Anna was unusually silent, which I hoped might be due to the same thought as kept me so, that of the parting to come on the morrow. I noted with secret delight that the songs she chose, when she went to the spinet at my request, were tinged with a sweet melancholy, which might be that of love. CHAPTER IX "I asked you to come out with me because there is something I must say before you return to Sandtoft." So I feebly began, as we paced the garden, now somewhat cleared of the mire and refuse brought by the flood, a few flowers lifting their heads to the July sun. "I told you the other night I loved you. I might never have dared to say it, but for the fear that I should not have another chance. Mistress Goel--Anna--do you, can you love me?"