brains unless I followed him. Roger still paying no heed, I slouched out into the hall.

The woman crept before me; Martin followed with the pistol pointing at my head; the lantern showed me presently a dark wooden stairway. It was rotten and riddled with decay; it creaked dismally beneath us; the balusters were broken; as I set my hand against the wall to steady me, going up after the slowly climbing p. 76light, I touched grime and cobwebs; the startled rats came squeaking and tumbling down the stair. Presently we reached the head of the stair—I have said that the house was two stories only in height; Mother Mag unlocked a door before me, and the cold air blowing in from the glassless window of the room struck on my face. The crone, standing aside for me to enter the room, leered and mumbled at me as I passed in, urged forward by the prodding of Martin’s pistol. I heard the rats scurrying over the floor before me. The wind blowing out the sacking before the window, the moonlight illumined the room,—it was big and bare as the room below it, but the rafters were high above me. A narrow wooden bedstead, with a pile of rags upon it, was propped against the wall; there was no other furniture save a three-legged stool. An open hearth with a rusted iron brazier stuck in it was at the farther end of the room. Martin, stepping in, demanded of the woman, “You’re sure the fellow will be safe here?”

p. 76

“You should know, my dear,” the woman tittered, holding to the doorway.

He strode to the window, plucked aside the sacking and tried the iron bars; satisfied then stepped over to the hearth, asking, “What of the chimney? Could he climb it?”

p. 77“If he should try,” Mag answered, laughing shrilly, “he’d only stick there and choke for soot. More, it’s near blocked with the bricks fallen in it. I heard ’em tumble in a gale two year back, and thought the Stone House was all comin’ down about my ears. Ay, but you knows the Stone House well as I do, Martin, and for why are you askin’?”

p. 77

“For why, Mother Mag,” he snarled. “You should know for why. Not the devil, your master, could save you from—you know from whom—if he comes, and finds the young dog missing. Ay, and he knows enough to stretch that scraggy neck of yours, well as big Roger Galt’s below. Look to it, Mother Mag,—d’ye look to it!”

She cowered and mumbled to herself; he, poking his head forward to look up the chimney, brought 

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