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 think we're afraid of you, you old play-acting red-haired monkey? You just let us free or it will be the worse for you. Do you know where you'll be this time to-morrow? Beating your fancy coloured hair against a padded cell, and that's where you should have been years ago."

"No, no," Hesther broke in. "No, no, David. That's not the way. You don't understand. Don't listen to him. I'm the only one in this, I tell you—can't you hear me?—that I will stay. I won't try to run away, you can do anything to me you like. I'll obey you—I will indeed. Please, please—Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand. But I do. Let them go. They've done no harm. They only wanted to help me. They didn't mean any- thing against you. They didn't truly. Oh! let them go! Let them go!"

In spite of her struggle for self-control her terror was rising, her terror never for herself but now only for them. She knew, more than they, of what he was. She saw perhaps in his face more than they would ever see.

But Harkness saw enough. He saw rising into Crispin's eyes the soul of that strange hairy fetid-smelling animal between whose paws Crispin's own soul was now lying. That animal looked out of Crispin's eyes. And behind that gaze was Crispin's own terror.

Crispin said: