disturbed by the hot blasts of his labouring lungs. His fingers that held her twitched convulsively as he spoke.
"Listen to me, Glory! and know me and respect me. I am no more to be escaped from than Fate. I am mighty over you as a Providence. You may writhe and circumvent, but I meet you at every turn, and tread you down whenever you think to elude me. Listen to me. Glory!" He paused, and drew a long breath; "Listen, I say, to me. Glory! how did you lose your money that night that Abraham Dowsing sold your sheep? I feel you stirring and starting in my hands. Yes, I took it. You went out with George De Witt, and left the purse on the table. When your mother left the room, I took the money. You may have it back now when you like, now that I have you. I took it—you see why. To have you in my power."
"Coward and thief!" gasped Mehalah.
"Ah! call me names if you like; you do not know me yet, and how impossible it is to resist me. You thought when you had got the money again, from George, that you had escaped me."
"Stay!" exclaimed Mehalah. "It was you," with compressed scorn, "that fired on George and me in the marsh."
"I fired at him, not at you; and had you not changed the place of the lanthorn in the boat, I should have shot him."
The girl shuddered in his hands.
"I feel you," he said with savage exultation. "You are beginning to know me now, and to tremble. When you know all, you will kneel to me as to your God, as almighty over your destiny, irresistible, able to crush and kill whom I will, and to conquer where I will. George De Witt stood in my way to you."
Mehalah's heart leaped and then stood still. Her pulse ceased to beat. She seemed to be hanging in space, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, hearing only, and only the words of the man before her.
"He left Mersea City one night. He left it in my boat with me."
He paused, rejoicing in her horror at this revelation of himself to her.
