“Mercy! mercy! the savage! he is killing me! murder! murder! help!”

“Who are you?” roared the man, shaking him.

“Oh, stop him! he will kill me!  Shoot him!  Don’t shoot me!  I am a respectable man.  It is the savage! kill him!  He is at the door—­please kill him!  I’ll give you a hundred pounds!”

“What is to do?  The critter is mad!”

“There! there! you will see a savage!  Shoot him! kill him!  For pity’s sake kill him, and I’ll tell you all!  I am respectable.  I’ll give you a hundred pounds to kill him!”

“Why, it is Smith, that gives us all a treat at times.”

“Don’t I!  Oh, my dear, good friend, he has killed me!  He came after me with his tomahawk.  Have pity on a respectable man—­and kill him!”

The man went to the door of the tent and sure enough there was Jacky, who had retired to some distance.  The man fired at him with as little ceremony as he would at a glass bottle, and, as was to be expected, missed him; but Jacky, who had a wholesome horror of the make-thunders, ran off directly, and went to hack the last vestiges of life out of brutus.

Crawley remained on his knees, howling and whimpering so piteously that the man took pity on this abject personage.

“Have a drop, Mr. Smith; you have often given me one—­there.  I’ll strike a light.”

The man struck a light and fixed a candle in a socket.  He fumbled in a corner for the bottle, and was about to offer it to Crawley, when he was arrested by a look of silent horror on his visitor’s face.

“Why, what is wrong now?”

“Look! look! look!” cried Crawley, trembling from head to foot.  “Here it comes! there is its tail!  Soon its eyes and teeth will catch light!  It knows the work we have been at.  Ah! ah! ah!”

The man looked round very uneasily.  Crawley’s way of pointing and glaring over one’s head at some object behind one was anything but encouraging.

“What? where?”

“There! there! coming through the side of the tent.  It can come through a wall!” and Crawley shook from head to foot.

“Why, that is your own shadow,” said the man.  “Why, what a faint-hearted one to shake at your own shadow.”

“My shadow!” cried Crawley; “Heaven forbid!  Have I got a tail?” screeched Crawley, reproachfully.

“That you have,” said the man, “now I look at you full.”

Crawley clapped his hand behind him, and to his horror he had a tail

CHAPTER LXXVI.

CRAWLEY, who, what with the habit of cerebral hallucination due to brandy and the present flutter of his spirits and his conscience, had for a moment or two lost all the landmarks of probability, no sooner felt his hand encounter a tail—­slight in size, but stiff as a pug’s, and straight as a pointer’s—­than he uttered a dismal howl, and it is said that for a single moment he really suspected premature caudation