"It was so. You touched the trigger. You knew that the piece was on full cock."

"It was altogether an accident. I knew nothing. I was conscious of nothing, save that I was trying to prevent you from committing a great crime."

"A great crime!" jeered he. "You thought only how you might save the life of your love."

Mehetabel stood still and turned to him.

"Jonas, do not say that. You cruelly, you wrongfully misjudge me I will tell you all, if you will I never would have hidden anything from you if I had not known how you would take and use what I said.

Iver and I were child friends, almost brother and sister. I always cared for him, and I think he liked me. He went away and I saw nothing of him. Then, at our wedding, he returned home; and since then I have seen him a good many times--you, yourself asked him to the Punch-Bowl, and bade me stand for him to paint. I cannot deny that I care for him, and that he likes me."

"As brother and sister?"

"No--not as brother and sister. We are children no longer. But, Jonas, I have no wish, no thought other than that he should leave Thursley, and that I should never, never, never see his face again.

Of thought, of word, of act against my duty to you I am guiltless.

Of thoughts, as far as I have been able to hold my thoughts in chains, of words, of acts I have nothing to reproach myself with, there have been none but what might be known to you, in a light clearer than that poured down by this moon. You will believe me, Jonas."

He looked searchingly into her beautiful, pale face--now white as snow in the moonlight. After a long pause, he answered, "I do not believe you."

"I can say no more," she spoke and sighed, and went forward.

He now lagged behind.

They stepped off the sand ridge, and were again in treacherous soil, neither land nor water, but land and water tossed together in strips and tags and tatters.

"Go on," he said. "I will step after you."

Presently she looked behind her, and saw him swinging his right hand, in which was the lump of ironstone.

"Why do you turn your head?" he asked.

"I look for you."

"Are you afraid of me?"

"I am sorry for you, Jonas."

"Sorry--because of my arm?"

"Because you are unable to believe a true woman's word."

"I do not understand you."

"No--I do not suppose you can."

Then he screamed, "No, I do not believe." He leaped forward, and struck her on the head with the nodule of iron, and felled her at his feet.

"There," said he; "with this stone you sought my death, and with it I cause yours."

Then he knelt where she lay motionless, extended, in the marsh, half out of the water, half submerged.

He gripped her by the throat, and by sheer force, with his one available arm, thrust her head under water.

The moonlight played in the ripples as they closed over her face; it surely was not water, but liquid silver, fluid diamond.

He endeavored to hold her head under the surface. She did not struggle. She did not even move. But suddenly a pang shot through him, as though he had been pierced by another bullet. The bandage about his wound gave way, and the hot blood broke forth again.

Jonas reeled back in terror, lest his consciousness should desert him, and he sank for an instant insensible, face foremost, into the water.

As it was, where he knelt, among the water-plants, they were yielding under his weight.

He scrambled away, and clung to a distorted pine on the summit of a sand-knoll.

Giddy and faint, he laid his head against the bush, and inhaled the invigorating odor of the turpentine. Gradually he recovered, and was able to stand unsupported.

Then he looked in the direction where Mehetabel lay. She had not stirred. The bare white arms were exposed and gleaming in the moonlight. The face he did not see. He shrank from looking towards it.

Then he slunk away, homewards.

CHAPTER XXV.

AN APPARITION.

When Bideabout arrived in the Punch-Bowl, as he passed the house of the Rocliffes, he saw his sister, with a pail, coming from the cow-house. One of the cattle was ill, and she had been carrying it a bran-mash.

He went to her, and said, "Sally!"

"Here I be, Jonas, what now?"

"I want you badly at my place. There's been an accident."

"What? To whom? Not to old Clutch?"

"Old Clutch be bothered. It is I be hurted terr'ble bad. In my arm.

If it weren't dark here, under the trees, you'd see the blood."

"I'll come direct. That's just about it. When she's wanted, your wife is elsewhere. When she ain't, she's all over the shop. I'll clap down the pail inside. You go on and I'll follow."

Jonas unlocked his house, and entered. He groped about for the tinder-box, but when he had found it was unable to strike a light with one hand only. He seated himself in the dark, and fell into a cold sweat.

Not only was he in great pain, but his mind was ill at ease, full of vague terrors. There was something in the corner that he could see, slightly stirring. A little moonlight entered, and a fold flickered in the ray, then disappeared again. Again something came within the light. Was it a foot? Was it the bottom of a skirt? He shrank back against the wall, as far as possible from this mysterious, restless form.

He looked round to see that the scullery door was open, through which to escape, should this thing move towards him.

The sow was grunting and squealing in her stye, Jonas hailed the sound; there was nothing alarming in that. Had all been still in and about the house, there might have come from that undefined shadow in the comer a voice, a groan, a sigh--he knew not what.