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“Never!” said Mitchelbourne.

“No, nor I,” said Lance, with a sudden cunning look at his companion, and opening his fingers, as he let the grain run between them. But he could not remove as easily from Mitchelbourne’s memories that picture he had shown him of a shaking and a shaken man. Mitchelbourne went to bed divided in his feelings between pity for the lady Lance was to marry, and curiosity as to Lance’s apprehensions. He lay awake for a long time speculating upon that mysterious green seed which could produce so extraordinary a panic, and in the morning his curiosity predominated. Since, therefore, he had no particular destination he was easily persuaded to ride to Saxmundham with Mr. Lance, who, for his part, was most earnest for a companion. On the journey Lance gave further evidence of his fears. He had a trick of looking backwards whenever they came to a corner of the road–an habitual trick, it seemed, acquired by a continued condition of fear. When they stopped at midday to eat at an ordinary, he inspected the guests through the chink at the hinges of the door before he would enter the room; and this, too, he did as though it had long been natural to him. He kept a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon the mantelshelf had somehow warned him into reticence, so that Mitchelbourne, had he not been addicted to his tobacco, would have learnt no more of the business and would have escaped the extraordinary peril which he was subsequently called upon to face.

But he was addicted to his tobacco, and no sooner had he finished his supper that night at Saxmundham than he called for a pipe. The maidservant fetched a handful from a cupboard and spread them upon the table, and amongst them was one plainly of Barbary manufacture. It had a straight wooden stem painted with hieroglyphics in red and green and a small reddish bowl of baked earth. Nine men out of ten would no doubt have overlooked it, but Mitchelbourne was the tenth man. His fancies were quick to kindle, and taking up the pipe he said in a musing voice:

“Now, how in the world comes a Barbary pipe to travel so far over seas and herd in the end with common clays in a little Suffolk village?”

He heard behind him the grating of a chair violently pushed back. The pipe seemingly made its appeal to Mr. Lance also.

“Has it been smoked?” he asked in a grave low voice.

“The inside of the bowl is stained,” said Mitchelbourne.

Mitchelbourne had been inclined to believe that he had seen last evening the extremity of fear expressed in a man’s face: he had now to admit that he had been wrong. Mr. Lance’s terror was a Circe to him and sunk him into something grotesque and inhuman; he ran once or twice in a little tripping, silly run backwards and forwards like an animal trapped and out of its wits; and his face had the look of a man suffering from a nausea; so that Mitchelbourne, seeing him, was ashamed and hurt for their common nature.

“I must go,” said Lance babbling his words. “I cannot stay. I must go.”

“To-night?” exclaimed Mitchelbourne. “Six yards from the door you will be soaked!”

“Then there will be the fewer men abroad. I cannot sleep here! No, though it rained pistols and bullets I must go.” He went into the passage, and calling his host secretly asked for his score. Mitchelbourne made a further effort to detain him.

“Make an inquiry of the landlord first. It may be a mere shadow that frightens you.”

“Not a word, not a question,” Lance implored. The mere suggestion increased a panic which seemed incapable of increase. “And for the shadow, why, that’s true. The pipe’s the shadow, and the shadow frightens me. A shadow! Yes! A shadow is a horrible, threatning thing! Show me a shadow cast by nothing and I am with you. But you might as easily hold that this Barbary pipe floated hither across the seas of its own will. No! ‘Ware shadows, I say.” And so he continued harping on the word, till the landlord fetched in the bill.