Jack Raymond

Then he remembered a stormy afternoon last January, and the slanting rain which had lashed against the fuchsia hedge, and Molly in the tool house, mourning for Tiddles.

The hand of the watch had crept past nine of the ten minute marks. He remembered I climbing one day on Deadman's Cliff, and seeing a rabbit which some one had shot, but not killed, and which had fallen to an inac­cessible place, and lay there, bleeding to death. He could see the quivering of its feet again quite distinctly, and the white tuft of the tail, and the blood trickling in a thin, slow stream down the grey rock face. Now again, something was bleeding to death, as the watch ticked. When the hand should reach the minute mark the thing would die; and after that nothing in the world would ever matter any more.

The ten minutes were over. Mr. Ray­mond rose and took the boy by the arm. "Come upstairs," he said.

They went up in silence into Jack's room; and the key turned in the lock.

CHAPTER V

On Friday evening after family prayers Mr. Raymond went up, as usual, to the locked gable room. It was after sunset, but there was still light enough to see.

Jack was crouching on the floor, half-dressed, in the furthest corner of the room, He would stay so without moving, sometimes, for hours together. On the table stood a plate of bread and a water-jug. There was also a Bible, for examination by the question must alternate with prayer and solemn exhor­tation, or it would seem too like mere butchery. The bread, to-day at least, had been a little neglected, but there was no water left in the jug. Jack, for the most part, had been quite passive. He had not tried to escape by the window, yet the descent, though less easy than from the other rooms, was possible, had the idea but occurred to him. On Tuesday evening he had sprung suddenly at his uncle and tried to strangle him. For one moment the furious pressure of fingers on his throat had made the Vicar wild with fear; then the boy had been overpowered and flung down on the floor. And then had followed horrors which would haunt the dreams of both for years to come.

After that his hands had been tied; but the precaution was needless; he had no thought of resistance. There had been some helpless, mechanical struggling, but nothing more. When unfastened he would cower down again in his corner, silent, understanding nothing. Now, as his uncle approached and spoke to him, he dropped face downwards on the floor in hysterical convulsions.

If, at the begi

He fetched water from the next room, and tried to make the boy drink it. But Jack's teeth were set like a vice. When at last the dumb writhing stopped, he began to sob uncontrollably.

"Thank God!" the Vicar murmured. This, without doubt, was the final break-down of the stubborn will that he had set himself to conquer; the hardest victory he had ever won. He rose with a long sigh of relief.

He had accomplished, without flinching, a very painful duty. He had disregarded not merely his own natural repugnance, but the tears and entreaties of the household, and even a grave danger of misrepresentation and scandal; and, probably, he had saved the boy's soul alive. He thought of the dead sailor among the sunken reefs by Longships Light. "It wouldn't go on if Captain John were alive," he had heard one fisherman's wife say to another that morning. She was right. Poor John would never have had firmness enough to drive out the dumb devil which had possessed the boy; but he would be grateful on the Day of Judgment if he found his son among the saved.

The sobbing had stopped at last; Jack was lying on his bed, quite still, his face buried in the pillow. The Vicar sat down beside him and touched him gently on the arm.

"There, Jack, don't cry any more; sit up and listen to me."

Jack sat up obediently, but he shrank away as far as he could. Apparently he had not been crying, from the look of his eyes. There was a curious glitter in them.

"My dear boy," the Vicar began with gentle solemnity; "all this has been as dread­ful to me as to you; I have seldom had so hard a duty to perform. But as a Christian man and a minister of God's word, I will not and I dare not tolerate impurity. That my house should have been made a centre of defilement and contamination, to spread the poison of vice among my flock; that my dead brother's child should have been a cause of offence to these i

He paused a moment. Jack had not moved. A sense of fear came over the Vicar as he saw how wide and strained the great eyes were. His voice began to shake a little. "I know," he went on, "that you now think me harsh and cruel; but you will thank me for it some day. My child, you have been in danger of hell fire."

The boy was still motionless; he seemed scarcely to breathe. The Vicar took him by the hand.

"But I see that your evil pride is broken, and that you are sorry for your sin. Come and lay your hand on God's holy Book, and promise me that you will abandon your wickedness. Then we will kneel down to­gether and pray that it may please Him to forgive you this deadly sin and to lead you into righteousness."

He rose, holding the boy's hand. It was silently, furtively pulled away.

"Jack!" he cried out. "Have you still not repented?"

Jack stood up and looked round him two or three times, like a creature caught in a trap. His breathing had a sharp staccato sound.

"Are you... going on?" he said. It was the first time that he had spoken since Tuesday night.

"Jack!" the Vicar cried again. A slow dark flush went up to his forehead; the line of his mouth grew thin and straight Some­thing atavistic, something sensual and violent came over the whole face. The nostrils began to quiver.

"Jack," he repeated for the third time, and stopped a moment. "Do you mean to... defy me?"

They looked at each other in silence. Then the Vicar's eyes crept slowly down­wards to the naked shoulder and to the straight red bar across it. The old ca

The touch sent fire through his pulses. Yet, in the instant before he gave himself up to the pleasures of his damnation, he had time to see his victim shrink away as if from lep­rosy, and to think: "The child has under­stood."

Jack went slowly to the bed-post and put up his hands to be tied.

That night, when the household was asleep, he dragged himself up off the floor. He had lain there, shivering, his head down on his arms, ever since his uncle went out.

He looked round the room. No light was allowed him, but the night was clear and the moon shone in at the window. In the ivy outside a bird began to twitter sleepily.

He reached the table at last, and drank some water. After that he was less inclined to tumble down when he tried to walk, and managed to open the cupboard door and take out the candle end and matches which he had hidden there some fortnight ago. He had done it for a purpose, but what purpose he had forgotten; and indeed, the objects and desires of the Jack who had lived a fortnight ago concerned him not at all.

Having got a light he opened the Bible, and tried to find the passage which was run­ning in his head. As familiar as he was with the Scriptures, it took him a long time; his hands were so stiff and swollen, and shook so as he turned the leaves. Besides, he was sick and giddy, and had to keep shutting his eyes to wait till the letters grew steady on the page. But he found it at last; the twenty-seventh chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy; the chapter of the mount of cursing. Then he stooped laboriously and picked up the whip. It had been thrown down on the floor, when at last the Vicar's thirst was satisfied. He laid it across the open book, and pressed the red lash down upon the nineteenth verse: "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen."