“La Meffraye did that,” he gasped; “she blasted it because I would not do the evil she wished.”

“Then why do you not kill her?” said Malise, whose methods were not subtle.  “If she were mine, I would throttle her, and give her body to the hounds.”

“Hush, I bid you be silent for dear God’s sake in whom I believe,” again came the voice of the cripple.  “You do not know what you say.  La Meffraye cannot die.  Perhaps she will vanish away in a blast of the fire of hell—­one day when God is very strong and angry.  But she cannot die.  She only leads others to death.  She dies not herself.”

“You are kind, gentlemen,” he went on after a pause, finding them continue silent; “I will show you all.  Pray the saint for me at his shrine that I may die and go to purgatory.  Or (if it were to a different one) even to hell—­that I might escape for ever from La Meffraye.”

His hand fumbled a moment at the closely buttoned collar of his blue blouse.  Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck.  From chin to bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, more of them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scots could observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic of scratches, claw marks, and, as it seemed, the bites of some fierce wild beast.

“Great Master of Heaven!” cried James Douglas.  “What hell hound hath done this to you?”

“The wife of my bosom,” quoth very grimly Caesar the cripple.

“A good evening to you, gentlemen all,” said a soft and winning voice from the doorway.

At the sound the old man staggered, reeled, and would have swayed into the fire had not Sholto seized him and dragged him out upon the floor.  All rose to their feet.

In the doorway of the cottage stood an old woman, small, smiling, delicate of feature.  She looked benignly upon them and continued to smile.  Her hair and her eyes were her most noticeable features.  The former was abundant and hung loosely about the woman’s brow and over her shoulders in wisps of a curious greenish white, the colour almost of mouldy cheese, while, under shaggy white eyebrows, her large eyes shone piercing and green as emerald stones on the hand of some dusky monarch of the Orient.

The old woman it was who spoke first, before any of the men could recover from their surprise.

“My husband,” she said, still calmly smiling upon them, “my poor husband has doubtless been telling you his foolish tales.  The saints have permitted him to become demented.  It is a great trial to a poor woman like me, but the will of heaven be done!”

The three Scots stood silent and transfixed, for it was an age of belief.  But the cripple lay back on the settle where Sholto had placed him, his lips white and gluey.  And as he lay he muttered audibly, “La Meffraye!  La Meffraye!  Oh, what will become of poor Caesar Martin this night!”

CHAPTER XLVIII