Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/36

12 found you, and behold, your heart has so melted within you that already you feel something of the pangs of death." Mr. Howitt did seem to be more dead than alive. His face was bloodless. He was shivering as if with cold.

"These melodramatic and, indeed, slightly absurd details"—the stranger waved his hand towards the efts, and newts, and snakes, and lizards—"were planned for your especial benefit. I was aware what a horror you had of creeping things. I take it, it is constitutional. I knew I had but to spring on you half a bushel or so of reptiles, and all the little courage you ever had would vanish. As it has done."

The stranger stopped. He looked, with evident enjoyment of his misery, at the miserable creature squatted on the back of the chair in front of him. Mr. Howitt tried to speak. Two or three times he opened his mouth, but there came forth no sound. At last he said, in curiously husky tones—

"Douglas?"

"Andrew?"

"If you do it they are sure to have you. It is not easy to get away from Jersey."

"How kind of you, Andrew, and how thoughtful! But you might have spared yourself your thought I have arranged all that There is a cattle-boat leaves for St. Malo in half an hour on the tide. You will be dead in less than half an hour—so I go in that."

Again there were movements of Mr. Howitt's lips. But no words were audible. The stranger continued.

"The question which I have had to ask myself