Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/249

 turning it over in his mind, "but I dare say you are right. After all, the sea, what does look so tidy on the top, must have lots of ugly secrets underneath, and I don't see why it shouldn't want to wash 'em ashore once in a way. I've often wondered myself about the dead what moves about inside the sea, and I thinks sometimes when the high tide runs into the great sluice and near fills the dykes that perhaps it buries things it's sick of in the mud. P'raps it's a-doin' it now, and that's wot's given you them notions."

"Perhaps it is, Jerry."

Now the mist was so thick that they did not get a far view of Jerk's gallows; indeed they had crossed the one-planked bridge over the dyke and half climbed Gallows Tree Hill before they viewed it at all. But as soon as they did Jerry sprang forward crying: "Who's been messing about with my bag o' sticks?"

The sacking had been torn, and from the slit appeared a hand. Jerry seized the hand and pulled. The rusty chain squeaked, and one of the rotten links "gave," and the ghastly fruit of the gallows tree fell upon the young hangman, who was borne to the ground beneath the falling weight. Imogene, with a cry, pulled it from him, and Jerk scrambled to his feet. Then they both looked.

The mildewed sacking, wet with the dense mist, had severed in the fall; the threads had rent at a hundred points, and from the fragments of scattered débris the