“Eh? What’s that?” grumbled his entertainer. “The church here? Oh, Tilly-Valley’s all right. Tilly-Valley’s as docile as a ewe-lamb.” He leaned forward with a sardonic leer, lowering his head between the candles as if he possessed a pair of sacred horns. “Tilly-Valley’s afraid of me; just simply afraid.” His voice sank into a whisper. “I make him say Mass every morning. D’ye hear? I make him say Mass whether there’s anyone there or not.”

The tone in which Mr. Urquhart uttered these words roused a definite hostility in Wolf’s nerves. There came over him a feeling as if he had been permitted, on an airless night, to catch a glimpse of monstrous human lineaments behind the heavy rumble of a particular clap of thunder. There was something abominably menacing in this great wrinkled white face, with its glossy, carefully parted hair, its pendulous eyelids, its baggy eye-folds, butting at him between the candle-flames.