Only one material and two spiritual things had power with him; the one
material thing was hunger, the two spiritual things were a feeble love
for Clare, and a strong horror of water of any seeming depth. Now a
new element was added to this terror by the meddling of the moon in
the fiendish mystery--the secret of which must, I think, have been the
bottomless depth she gave the water.

He rushed down the garden. With frightful hindrance from the
overgrowth, he found the prisoned door by strange perversion become a
ladder, gained by it the top of the wall, and sped along as if pursued
by an incarnate dread. Horror of horrors! all at once the moon again
looked up at him from below: he was within a yard or two of the big
water-but! Right up to it he must go, for, close to it, on the other
side of the wall, was the heap of iron by which alone he could get
down. He tightened every nerve for the effort. He assured himself that
the thing would be over in a moment; that the water was quiet, and
could not follow him; that presently he would find himself in the
smithy by the warm forge-fire. The scaring necessity was, that he must
stoop and kneel right over the water-but, in order to send his legs in
advance down the wall to the top of the mound. It was a moment of
agony. That very moment, with an appalling unearthly cry, something
dark, something hideous, something of inconceivable ghastliness, as it
seemed to Tommy, sprang right out of the water into the air. He
tumbled from the wall among the iron, and there lay.

The stolen eggs were avenged. The hen, feverish and unhappy from the
loss of her hope of progeny, had gone to the but to sip a little
water. Tommy, appearing on the wall above her, startled her. She,
flying up with a screech, startled Tommy, and became her own unwitting
avenger.