“You will go in,” panted the latter, beating under his victim by mere furious force of muscle. “You will go in, and lie and rot till I can carry you to Winton Gaol. Down with you!”
In his stumbling wrestle with the half-fainting creature, he twisted about, saw something, and let go his prey for a moment. Whimple fell back as if he were dying, and on the instant the other struck up and caught Darda by the wrist. A thin flash of steel went above their heads, and there was the sound of a knife ringing on the boards. There was no blood-letting; but the moral was as if there had been. The fever of passion in the man was subdued to a worser coldness of cruelty.
“Not yet!” he said, in a low voice, his eyes holding her like evil magnets. “Not yet, you pretty animal!”
In a moment he leapt at her, lifted her light form in his arms, and, clapping his hand over her shrill voluble mouth, bore her to the front of the house, and, rolling her without, closed and bolted the door upon her.
Then he returned with smiling lips to the other.
He lay as he had left him—cowering, exhausted, half-stupid with terror already, it seemed.
Tuke leaned and took the impassive form under the arms. With his foot he shuffled the limp trailing legs over into the pit, and so lowered the body with a single heave. It went down unresistingly, save for a broken moan or two, and sank into a huddled heap at the bottom.
He raised the flap, and stood an instant looking down. There was little motion below him, or sign of life but a weak fitful whimpering.
Feeling as one who stubbornly signs his own soul to the devil, he closed the pit-mouth, secured it, and walked away with his heart thumping. And there rose up to and pursued him a long dreary whine like that of a dog baying the moon.