Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/116

 water-rat that came out in the evening to hunt in the rushes; the swift-winged dragon-fly that could stand in midair stock still, as it seemed, to look at you; the myriad mosquitoes with their fantastic air dance, hunting in tribes along the sluggish waters; the tadpole who looped about in the water below; and more especially the flabby flap of the night-prowling bat who hung all day head downward from a decayed old tree trunk that was rotting on the opposite bank to Jerk's estate. Now this same tree trunk had put ideas into young Jerk's head. It was obviously no good to any one, and yet Jerk found himself regretting that it had not lived and died upon his land, for it was shaped devilishly like a gallows tree, and if he could only erect a gallows tree upon the summit of Lookout Mountain he would be more than ever living up to his reputable name of Hangman Jerk. He half thought at one time of digging it up and replanting it on his own property, but when he had caught hold of a branch one day and it had crumbled away in his hand he considered that, although very nice and weird to behold, it wasn't much use as a genuine gibbet, and a genuine gibbet he then and there resolved to possess. Now the silver crowns of Doctor Syn would buy the most glorious scaffold, a regular professional affair, fixed snug and firm in the ground, and capable of supporting the weight of a wriggling man. Mipps was the man to undertake the job, for he was a first-rate carpenter, and there was wood and