Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/139

 a kind of villager's pride, you know—'she wasn't going to have other folks talking as they did anyway when they saw how quickly she had left.'

"But she told one of her daughters and the daughter told me. There was almost nothing in the actual incident, but it told me two things, one, that the older Crispin really is mad—definitely, positively insane, the other that the son, in spite of his seeming so submissive, has some sort of hold over him. There is something between the two that I don't understand.

"Well, that decided me. I went to Treliss to find out what I could. I had to hang about for quite a time before I could learn anything at all. Crispin was going on at Treliss just as he had done at Milton. He's taken this strange house outside the town which you'll see to-night. Quite a famous place in a way, built on the sea-cliff with a tangled overgrown wood behind it and a high white tower that you can see for miles over the country-side. At first the people liked him just as they had done at Milton and were interested in him. Then there were stories and more stories. Suddenly, only a week ago, he said he was going abroad, and to-morrow he's going.

"Now the point I want to make clear to you is that the man's mad. I'm not a clever chap. I don't know any of your medical theories. I've never had any leaning that way, but I take it that the