I ventured to suggest that the folk of the countryside held a very different opinion of Mr. Stennis. But I could not have made a more unfortunate remark. In a moment the fire of madness flashed up from her eyes. The colour fled her lips. Her fingers twitched as if drawn by wires. She was again the mad woman I had seen leading the procession of the little coffins. "The folk of the countryside!" she screamed. "Ranging bears, wild beasts of the field! Oh, I could tear them to pieces! Gangs of evil beasts, slow bellies, coming here roaring and mouthing, trampling my lily beds, uprooting everything, laying waste the labour of years. Oh, I would slay them with my hands—yes, root out and destroy, even as Sodom and as Gomorrah!"
And suddenly lifting up her hands with the action of a prophetess inspired, she chanted—
O daughter of Babylon,
Near to destruction,
Bless'd shall he be that thee rewards
As thou to us hast done.
Yea, happy, surely, shall he be,
Thy tender little ones,
Who shall lay hold upon, and them
Shall dash against the stones.
I trembled, as well I might, at the fury I had unwittingly kindled.
We were now in the woods, the main travelled road far behind us, a complexity of paths and rabbit tracks all about, and before us a green walk, dark and clammy, upon which the snow had hardly yet laid hold. On one side rose up the wall of an ancient orchard, which they said had been planted and built about by the monks of old. On the other was the moat, still frozen, only divided from us by an evergreen fence, untrimmed, thick, and high, probably contemporary with the orchard.
Suddenly, at the entrance to this green tunnel, Aphra Orrin turned and grasped me by both wrists. Her face, as it glowered down at me, had become as the face of a fiend seen fresh from the place of the Nether Hate.
"Jeremy, Jeremy!" she cried. And at the sound of her voice it came to me that of a certainty I had fallen into a trap. This was not the road to the House of Deep Moat. I ought to have known better. I had been drawn hither solely to be murdered. I tried to scream, but could not. As in a dream, when one is chased by terrible things out of the Unknown, speech left me. I felt my knees weaken. And, indeed, had I been as strong as ever I was in my life, of what use would my strength have been? For there, at the entrance of the green tunnel, stood Mad Jeremy, smiling and licking his lips.
Meantime Aphra Orrin held me, shaking me to and fro as a terrier might a rat. She was as strong as most men—stronger, indeed, with the madness that was in her.
"Slay the daughter of Babylon! Slay her! Slay, and spare not!" she cried.