“That Sunday evening we sat, one on each side of the hearth, in the Vicarage drawing-room.  She was talking—­talking; and I sat tapping my foot and whispering to myself, ’You are too fat, Lydia, you are too fat.’  Her talk ran on the two sermons I had preached that day, the dresses of the congregation, the expense of living, the parish ailments—­inexhaustible, trivial, relentless.  Suddenly she looked up and our eyes met.  Her voice trailed off and dropped like a bird wounded in full flight.  She stood up and took a step towards me.  ‘Is anything the matter, William?’ she asked solicitously.  ’You are too fat, my dear,’ I answered, laughing, and struck her full in the face with my fist.

“She did not quiver much—­not half enough—­but dropped like a half-full sack on to the carpet.  I caught up a candle and examined her.  Her neck was dislocated.  She was quite dead.”

The madman skipped up from his boulder, and looked at me with indescribable cunning.

“I am so glad, sir,” he said, “that you did not bleed when I struck you; it was a great mercy.  The sight of blood affects me—­ah!” he broke off with a subtle quiver and drew a long breath.  “Do you know the sands by Woeful Ness—­the Twin Brothers?” he asked.

I knew that dreary headland well.  For half a mile beyond the grey Church and Vicarage of Bleakirk it extends, forming the northern arm of the small fishing-bay, and protecting it from the full set of the tides.  Towards its end it breaks away sharply, and terminates in a dorsal ridge of slate-coloured rock that runs out for some two hundred feet between the sands we call the Twin Brothers.  Of these, that to the south, and inside the bay, is motionless, and bears the name of the ‘Dead-Boy;’ but the ‘Quick-Boy,’ to the north, shifts continually.  It is a quicksand, in short; and will swallow a man in three minutes.

“My mind,” resumed my companion, “was soon made up.  There is no murder, thought I, where there is no corpse.  So I propped Lydia in the armchair, where she seemed as if napping, and went quietly upstairs.  I packed a small hand-bag carefully with such clothes as she would need for a journey, descended with it, opened the front door, went out to be sure the servants had blown out their lights, returned, and hoisting my wife on my shoulder, with the bag in my left hand, softly closed the door and stepped out into the night.  In the shed beside the garden-gate the gardener had left his wheelbarrow.  I fetched it out, set Lydia on the top of it, and wheeled her off towards Woeful Ness.  There was just the rim of a waning moon to light me, but I knew every inch of the way.

“For the greater part of it I had turf underfoot; but where this ended and the rock began, I had to leave the barrow behind.  It was ticklish work, climbing down; for footing had to be found, and Lydia was a monstrous weight.  Pah! how fat she was and clumsy—­lolling this way and that!  Besides, the bag hampered me.  But I reached the foot at last, and after a short rest clambered out along the ridge as fast as I could.  I was sick and tired of the business.