Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/74

 further corpselike expression. Jerk was terrified that the thing would see him, but it didn't, for the shining black eyes, unlike anything he had ever seen before, were directed entirely upon the lighted window of the vicarage, and up to it he crawled, and peeped into the room. The schoolmaster was standing with his back to the window, but he presently turned and went to the door. The weird figure crouched in the flower-bed under the sill, for Mr. Rash opened the front door and went round to the back of the house to the tree where he had tied the horse.

As soon as he had gone the yellow-faced man entered the house. Now Jerry fell to wondering what this was all about, and what the little sexton would do if he caught sight of the apparition. But the sexton's eyes were closed and his mouth wide open, and Jerry could hear him beginning to snore. When the door of the room was opened the figure cautiously crossed toward the fire, but the sexton didn't move; he was asleep.

Now above the chimney-piece hung a harpoon; it belonged to Doctor Syn, who was a collector of nautical curiosities; and this harpoon had once been Clegg's. It was a curious shape, and it was supposed that only one man in the Southern Seas besides the pirate had ever succeeded in throwing it.

The figure was now between Mipps and the firelight, and it began examining the curios upon the