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with such facility that I believe thee sunk to thy neck in the Devil’s quagmire, bogged in thy sin, and thy hands red with blood.”

With that, he set out again but at an ordinary pace, and Phil, wonderfully perplexed by his words, fell into his step.

Again the fellow shook his head very sadly. “A secret and most venomous blow! Th’ art a Devon man?”

“Nay, I never saw Devon.”

The fellow shot him a strange glance and shifted the book from one arm to the other.

“And have never seen Devon? Never laid foot in Bideford, I’ll venture.” There was a cunning look in his eyes and again he shifted the book.

“’T is even so.”

“A most venomous blow! This wonderfully poseth me.” After a time he said in a very low voice, “There is only one other way. Hither you have told me a most wicked lie or Jamie Barwick told you.”

The fellow, watching like a cat at a rat-hole, saw Phil start at the sound of Jamie Barwick’s name.

“I knew it!” he cried. “He’d tell, he’d tell! He’s told before—’t was he took the tale to Devon. He’s a tall fellow but I’ll hox him yet. It was no fault of mine—though I suppose you’ll not believe that.”

Upon the mind of Philip Marsham there descended a baffling array of memories. The name of the big countryman with the gun carried him back to that afternoon in Moll Stevens’s alehouse, whence with good cause he had fled for his life. And now this stray wight, with a great folio volume under his arm, out of a conglomeration of meaningless words had suddenly thrown at the lad’s head the name of Jamie Barwick.