I took the cup from his hands and stooped over the water.  As I did so, he leapt on me like a cat from behind.  I felt a hideous blow on the nape of the neck:  a jagged flame leapt up:  the sunshine turned to blood—­then to darkness.  With hands spread out, I stumbled blindly forward and fell at full length into the beck.

When my senses returned, I became aware, first that I was lying, bound hand and foot and securely gagged, upon the turf; secondly, that the horses were still tethered, and standing quietly at the foot-bridge; and, thirdly, that my companion had resumed his position on the boulder, and there sat watching my recovery.

Seeing my eyes open, he raised his hat and addressed me in tones of grave punctilio.

“Believe me, sir, I am earnest in my regret for this state of things.  Nothing but the severest necessity could have persuaded me to knock the son of my late esteemed friend over the skull and gag his utterance with a stone—­to pass over the fact that it fairly lays my sense of your hospitality under suspicion.  Upon my word, sir, it places me in a cursedly equivocal position!”

He took a pinch of snuff, absorbed it slowly, and pursued.

“It was necessary, however.  You will partly grasp the situation when I tell you that my name is Teague—­the Reverend William Teague, Doctor of Divinity, and formerly incumbent of Bleakirk-on-Sands.”

His words explained much, though not everything.  The circumstances which led to the Reverend William’s departure from Bleakirk had happened some two years before my birth:  but they were startling enough to supply talk in that dull fishing village for many a long day.  In my nursery I had heard the tale that my companion’s name recalled:  and if till now I had felt humiliation, henceforth I felt absolute fear, for I knew that I had to deal with a madman.

“I perceive by your eyes, sir,” he went on, “that with a part of my story you are already familiar:  the rest I am about to tell you.  It will be within your knowledge that late on a Sunday night, just twenty-nine years ago, my wife left the Vicarage-house, Bleakirk, and never returned; that subsequent inquiry yielded no trace of her flight, beyond the fact that she went provided with a small hand-bag containing a change of clothing; that, as we had lived together for twenty years in the entirest harmony, no reason could then, or afterwards, be given for her astonishing conduct.  Moreover, you will be aware that its effect upon me was tragical; that my lively emotions underneath the shock deepened into a settled gloom; that my faculties (notoriously eminent) in a short time became clouded, nay, eclipsed—­necessitating my removal (I will not refine) to a madhouse.  Hey, is it not so?”

I nodded assent as well as I could.  He paused, with a pinch between finger and thumb, to nod back to me.  Though his eyes were now blazing with madness, his demeanour was formally, even affectedly, polite.