“Good, is he?  Yes; but is he the man for ’ee?  Do ‘ee ever feel your lil’ heart beating the quicker against his?  If he’m a man, why don’t ’ee tell him everything and let him kick me out, eh?”

“You know I can’t tell him—­that I couldn’t ever.”

“He’ll knaw when I’m dead, because I’ll lave word to show all men how one brother took everything in life from another....  He’ll knaw then.”

“I don’t believe you; I don’t believe anyone would be so wicked, even you.”

“Ah! there’s things in life even you don’t knaw anything about, though you’m so wicked yourself,” said Archelaus grimly; “but you too ’ll knaw a bit more by-and-bye.  I won’t be able to keep off it for long, Phoebe.  Maybe it’ll take me suddenly when I’m here one day.  You’ll hear my life-blood running away, lil’ ’un, and think for a minute it’s water drippen’ somewhere.  Or perhaps I’ll just take a rope and hang myself, and you’ll hear I choken’.  I saw a man hung in Australy once for stealen’ another man’s gold, and he took an awful time to die, he did.  You could hear the choken’ of him loud as bellows....”  Phoebe had turned sickly pale, she screamed out, and thrust him away from her.  “Katie!” she called.  Archelaus went to the door and shouted into the kitchen.  “Your missus is feelen’ faint,” he informed the maids.  “I just looked into the parlour and saw her lyen’ all wisht like.”  Katie bustled past with an odd look at him, and Phoebe was taken up to bed.  She was better again next day, but she feared after that to leave her room, and in spite of Ishmael’s protests stayed in bed, pleading that she felt giddy whenever she stood up.  Twice Archelaus came to the house and had to be content with calling to her through the door, and each time she replied she was not well enough to see him.

He began to fume that his hidden delight of torment, which in his distorted mind was part of his scheme for revenge against Ishmael, was being thwarted; and day by day as he brooded to himself, his thoughts ever on the same theme, the end of all his anger and her fear began to loom, as he had planned.  It was chance that eventually played into his hands, but the will and the cunning that made him ripe to catch at it were his already.

CHAPTER II

THE PASSAGE

Phoebe lay in her big bed, her arms straight out upon the coverlet, listless palms upwards, her eyes closed, and her dim thoughts—­the unformed blind thoughts of a resentful child—­her only company.  A week earlier Ishmael had been called up to Devon to see his mother, who had taken a turn for the worse:  she had died a few hours after his arrival; he had had to stay and see to the funeral, and was not due back till that evening.  John-James was in the fields and the maids were all in the dairy, working hard to finish the butter for market.  Phoebe did not mind—­for the first time in her life she preferred to be alone; she found it more and more