Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/263

Rh "Have you not a question to ask me, 'Where he now is? What I know of him?'" No—she could not speak, she could not even breathe. "Do you remember when you came on Michaelmas Day to pay me my rent, how you heard and saw my mad brother in the cell there below?" He paused again, and then chuckled. "The poor wretch died and I buried him there. I brought George here, I made him drunk, and chained him in my brother's place, and he went mad with his captivity in darkness and cold and nakedness." The blood spouted from her heart through every artery. She tried to cry but could not, she strove to escape his hands, she was unable. She panted, and her eyes stood open, fixed as those of a corpse, staring before her. "You lost your sheep," he went on, with exultation. "I took them. I took them to rob you of every chance of paying me, and keeping clear of me." She did not hear him. She cared nothing about sheep. She was thinking of George, of his imprisonment and madness. "At last, when I feared that after all you might slip from me by means of that cripple at Wyvenhoe, I did more. I watched you on New Year's Eve; I waited for you to go to sleep, that I might fire your house. You did better than I had thought, you went out; and then I set the Ray Farm in flames. What cared I for the loss? It was nothing. By it I gained you. I secured you under my roof, by burning you out of the shelter of your own." He swelled with pride. "You know me now. Glory! Now think you that escape from me is possible? No, you do not, you cannot. I hedge you in, I undermine the ground you tread. I saw away the posts that hold up the roof above your head. You know now what I am, irresistible, almighty, as far as you are concerned, your fate incarnate. And I know you. I know that you are one who will never yield till you have found a man who is mightier in will and in power than you; those who have fought are best friends after the struggle, when each knows his own strength and the full measure of the resistance of the other. We have had one wrestle, and I have flung