Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/80

 so of horsemen, lit by a light that shone from their faces and from the heads of their mad horses. Jerk could see Rash shaking as if with the ague, but for some reason he pretended not to see the hideous sight.

"What are you looking at?" he said, "for I see nothing."

"There, there!" screamed old Pepper. "You must see something there!"

"Nothing but dyke, marsh, and the highroad," faltered the schoolmaster.

"No! There—look—riders—men on horses. Marsh fiends!" yelled the terrified physician.

"What in hell's name are you trying to scare me for?" cursed the trembling Rash. "Don't I tell you I see nothing? Ain't that enough for you?"

"Then God forgive me!" cried poor Sennacherib, "for I can see 'em and you can't; there's something wrong with my soul."

"Then God have mercy on it!" The words came somehow through the schoolmaster's set teeth; the silver steel leapt from the pocket of his overcoat, and Sennacherib was savagely struck twice under the arm as he pointed at the riders. He gave one great cry and fell forward, while the schoolmaster, entirely gone to pieces, with quaking limbs and chattering teeth, stooped down and cleaned the knife by stabbing it swiftly up to the hilt in a clump of short grass that grew in the soil by the roadside.