I had plenty to think about--so much, indeed, that I could think coherently about nothing. Ideas crowded incongruously upon one another, now this one and now that catching my attention for a moment, and then receding to the background. From the picture of my late adventure in the mill-stream, I slid to a review of Agatha--my relations with her; did she care for me? had my lucky exploit really advantaged me? and ought I to have stolen a kiss upon the doorstep? Instead of considering these questions, I was pondering the tale which Poyntz had begun to tell. Was it all true? would he ever finish it? and what would be its upshot? But now the pearl-shell necklace ruled my thoughts. Was it possibly the same as that which my great-grandmother had lost? and if so, would Agatha be likely to know anything about it? The next moment a vision of Scholar Gloam had risen before me. How had he come to die, and be buried beneath the Black Oak? and why was the old mill considered haunted? David--the handsome housekeeper's son--what had become of him? and, above all, what had been the fate of the little sea-nymph? Then the necklace once more--how came Agatha to attach such talismanic virtues to it? and was not her doing so evidence that she must know its ancient history? Again, was Agatha Poyntz's own daughter? and if so, who and what had been her mother? for she must be the child of a union prior to that which had resulted in Peter. The speculation gave place in turn to the idea of the mill-wheel possessed by the devil, or by the soul of the murdered miller--Poyntz had seemed uncertain which. Had its "laugh" really been so terrible? or had not an originally harmless, if disagreeable noise, acquired a supernatural horror only because listened to across a gap of twenty years? Ah well, what matter to me were all these idle, unanswerable queries? Behind all things--before all things, I seemed to meet the sweet fascination of Agatha's dark eyes, and to catch the gleam of her yellow hair. Yes, ever and ever, as the pendulum swings outwards and returns, does my thought come back to Agatha!