Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/247

 wink. However, this didn't trouble Jerry, for the laugh was all on his side. Not content with an empty scaffold, he had gone out the night before, while Doctor Syn and the captain had been chatting in the sanded parlour, and collected two great sacks full of dried sticks and sand, which, with the help of a few tightly knotted lengths of twine, he had converted into the semblance of a man, and this same dummy he had hanged from the rusty chain. It had looked splendid swinging there with the mist wrapped round its feet. This indeed was playing hangman's games with a vengeance. Impatient as he was to see the fruits of his labour, impatient he had to remain, for he was not released till nightfall, when Mrs. Waggetts entered the bar with Sexton Mipps. Freed at last from duty, Jerry stepped outside, pulling his hat over his eyes and tucking up his collar, for the wind was blowing up for a cold night. He was leaving the yard with a brisk step when he noticed a cloaked figure coming to meet him. It was Imogene.

"Jerry," she whispered, "who put up that gallows on your plot of land?"

"It's my gallows," answered Jerk proudly. "I paid for it, and Mister Mipps it was wot helped me to set it up."

"It's a real one, Jerry," the girl replied.

"Yes, that it is—and ain't it fine?"

"But there's a man, a real man hanging there."

At this Jerk slapped his knee with enthusiasm and