Bertram Mitford (continued 5)

“Indeed?” he replied carelessly. “I just remember being at Wandsborough many years ago, when I was almost a boy. By the way, what’s that remarkably fine place I passed driving over here? It stood back in a park, where there were any amount of deer.”

“Was it against the hill, sir? ’Cos that’s Cranston ’All—Gen’ral Dorrien’s. Yes, that is a fine place, sir.”

“Dorrien did you say? Dorrien? Now that’s strange. Fact is, I used to know someone of that name, but I’m certain he hadn’t ever been in the army. Has this one any sons?”

“Oh, yes, sir. There’s—”

“Ah! The one I knew hadn’t. He was a bachelor.”

“That must ’ave been the old squire, sir—the Gen’ral’s brother. ’E was a bachelor. But this one—well, sir, I don’t mind tellin’ you, ’e’s a terribly cross-tempered gentleman, and they do say as how none of his fam’ly can live with him.”

“Indeed? How’s that?”

“Well, sir, I believe it’s this way,” went on the loquacious waiter, delighted at the prospect of whiling away a goodly portion of this dull Sunday afternoon at his favourite pastime. Here, too, was a stranger, one who seemed to listen to him with interest. So he plunged at once into his lecture, with the utter disregard of his class for sequence or order in narration, and the stranger was favoured among other incidents with a highly-coloured version of the fracas which had taken place in the Dorrien family some months earlier.

“And then, you see, sir, the General was that savage with the poor young Squire, ’cos he not only wanted to marry the parson’s young lady, but it seemed he hadn’t been playing quite on the square with a gal in Cranston village—Steve Devine’s gal, that was—he as is now keeper at Colonel Neville’s. And now they say he’s took up with her in London. She’s a play-actress up there, they say.”

If the slightest possible change came over the listener’s countenance at this announcement, to have discovered it would have taken a very close observer indeed, which the waiter was not.

“H’m! A sort of Don Juan this young Dorrien seems to have been,” remarked the stranger more to himself than to the other, and pronouncing the name in the usual British and erroneous way.

“Yessir—I daresay, sir—King John—wasn’t ’e the party that ’ad eight wives and cut their ’eads off as fast as he got tired of them?”

“Well, what sort of a girl was this?”

“A fine gal, sir. A reelly fine, purty gal, and Gipsy Steve, he looked after her orlways and led her a life of it, if any young chap so much as looked at her. And now, sir, ’ere’s a bit of queer human natur’,” went on the gossip, sinking his voice and looking preternaturally wise. “There’s some wot sez they don’t believe the gal’s with Mr Roland at all, but that his brother started the story. Ah! he’s a bad lot, is young Mr Hubert.”

“Well, but why the deuce should he tell such an infernal lie as that?”

The loquacious one looked at him for a moment pityingly, and his voice grew even more confidential.

“Bless your ’art. Don’t you see, sir? The young one wants to stick to all the swag. If the other comes back, well, of course, it’ll make all the difference to this one. And so ’e says ’e sor his brother and Lizzie in London together, and the General’s more furious than ever about it.”

“And what do they think in Wandsborough?”

“Well, sir, there’s them as believes it and there’s them as doesn’t. For my part I dunno wot to think, though, of course, it’s no concern o’ mine.”

“H’m!” The stranger yawned and deliberately stretched himself, and began to show signs of moving, and the loquacious one perceived that his fill of gossip was over for the present.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he remarked, “but are you ’Igh Church?”

“What? Why?” answered the stranger, starting from a reverie.

“Because, sir, if you are, there’s a big ’Igh Church over at Wandsborough, and lots of folks go from here on a Sunday evening. I’ve been myself once or twice, but couldn’t make nothing out of it. But it’s very gorjus.”

“Well, it’d be something to do. How long does it take to walk over?”

“Nearly an hour, sir, if you walk very quick. But the walk’s jest lovely, and so’s the music.”

“All right. I may go over. Now I’m going upstairs,” and escaping from the running fire of enquiries by which he was pursued, the stranger made his way to his bed-room. Once there, and the door locked, a restless sigh escaped him. He threw open the window, and kept consulting his watch from time to time. Then he sat down and fell into deep thought, with knitted brows and fixed gaze. He was thinking over all he had just heard. The thoughtless chatter of busybodies, like this talkative waiter, often reflected public opinion with marvellous accuracy. After a while he rose, and pulling on a warm overcoat and taking a stout walking-stick in his hand, he went out.

About half a mile outside Wandsborough there is a certain stile leading from the high road into the footpath to Minchkil Bay. Anyone commanding a view of this stile might have witnessed a curious spectacle on this dark, wintry afternoon. They might have descried an elderly stranger, grey-bearded and spectacled, leaning over the stile, his gaze riveted on the cliff path; and our concealed witnesses would opine that the said stranger had one foot in the grave. Then through the gloom rang out a clash of bells upon the damp, chilly atmosphere; a joyous, musical peal, that seemed to tell of light and warmth and peaceful homes. And the lonely man standing there, with his eyes wandering over the darkening wold, heard it, and his face wore an expression such as might rest upon the countenances of the lost. Yes, he seemed dreadfully ill, hardly able to stand, in fact; for presently he sank down into the rimy grass in a half-faint.

For long he sat thus. Then, suddenly starting to his feet, he walked rapidly towards the town, and in a few minutes stood within the church porch. The change from darkness to the brilliantly-lighted interior was bewildering. Mechanically he slipped into the place shown him by the civil verger, heedless of the screwed-round heads and curious glances inseparable from the event. How familiar it all seemed! The stately altar lighted by its six tall tapers; the rows of white-clad choristers, and the celebrant in his rich cope; the solemn chanting and the fragrant fumes of the incense—what memories it seemed to bring back! And around him many a familiar face—yet none knew him.

Mechanically again he took the hymn-book which the good-natured verger put into his hands, and—held it upside down. After the singing, a priest in surplice and stole entered the pulpit and began his sermon, evoking in the stranger’s face a momentary gleam of recognition. But his thoughts soon wandered. Our friend Turner, indeed, was a pulpit bore of the first water, but had he been a very Chrysostom he would have met with scant attention from this stranger, who had walked all the way from Battisford to attend the evening service.

The function over, the stranger hastened not to depart, but lingered, half-concealed, in the shadow of a pillar, apparently intent on studying the framed list of notices there hung up—in reality, his keen eyes narrowly scanned the dispersing congregation. One group stood chatting in a low voice just inside the west door, and, as his eye fell upon it, again that white, haggard look came into his face.

“Brown,” said a low, sweet, woman’s voice, addressing the verger, who was intent on putting out the lights. “Please tell Mr Mason that I shall be happy to take his organ duties to-morrow, and even the next day, if he wishes it. So that’ll be a weight off his mind.”

“Very good, Miss Olive. I know he’ll be glad. I’ll be sure to tell him. Good-night, ladies.”

Then the unknown, with a nod and a “good-evening” to the friendly verger, passed out into the street, keeping within a dozen yards behind the first speaker. Immediately a dark figure passed him hurriedly, and gaining the side of her whom he was watching, a cordial greeting ensued, and the two dropped a little behind the rest. The cassock and cloak which he wore denoted one of the parish clergy, and as he passed under the light of a lamp, the watcher recognised the features of Turner, the curate.

An overpowering desire came over the stranger to learn the burden of their conversation. That a strong bond of mutual sympathy existed between them he had no difficulty in perceiving, and his mind leaped to its own conclusions. Then with noiseless step he overtook the pair and passed them slowly.

But what the sad, soft voice was saying, as well as the answer, was inaudible to the listener. A loud, harsh hammering was sounding in his brain, and he felt faint and dizzy. Fearful of betraying himself, he crossed the road, and leaned against the wall for a few moments to recover. When he looked up again the street was empty.

He wandered out of the town, and still lost in his reflections, hardly noticed where he was till he reached the stile where he had rested a short while previously. Then, instead of continuing his way along the high road, he turned off across the fields, and began to ascend the bleak heights which lay above the cliffs.

And it was a weird and desolate scene, that winter expanse of sea and land upon which the wanderer’s glance was bent. On all sides to seaward the mist-wrack was rolling back like a curtain, and a red half-moon slowly rose in the heavens, pouring a pale, spectral light upon the silent waters and the great mysterious cliffs. A murmur of waves breaking on the beach was upborne to his ears, as he strode rapidly on through the rimy heather plants and the chill, bracing whiff of the salt sea. Minchkil Beacon is left behind, and the rugged brow overhanging Hadden’s Slide, and still he keeps on his way, stopping now and again to gaze upon the solemn grandeur of the moonlit coastline.

It is cold, but the pedestrian is in a glow of warmth after his hard, uphill exercise, for he pauses occasionally to rest and wipe his heated brow. What then makes him start and shiver violently, as though chilled to the very marrow!

Cleaving the still and frosty air comes a deep-toned, lugubrious howl, long-drawn, and proceeding apparently from the sea itself—a dismal, unearthly baying, not loud, but with a carrying vibration that renders the sound no less felt than heard. The listener standing alone on the cliff feels an icy perspiration break out upon his forehead, and his dilated gaze is riveted upon two rock pinnacles rising out of the sea beneath. The crest of the highest is hidden in a dark cloud.

Stay! A strange phenomenon, that! There is not a vestige of cloud nearer than the horizon. Yet down yonder a dark wreath broods over the summit of one of those rock-turrets. And the highest of The Skegs is far below the brow of the cliff.

The contour of the coast is perfectly outlined in the clear and searching moonlight. The silver surface of the sea is deserted. But darker than ever, and seeming to take shape beneath the watcher’s gaze, the cloud rests upon that turret-rock, and from its black folds again and again sounds forth upon the silent night the terrible Death Portent.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

The Tragedy of a Winter Night.

“Pooh! What a fool I am, and what fancies a course of starvation and mooning will put into a man’s head!” exclaimed the stranger impatiently. “A wreath of mist over the sea, and immediately one conjures up an apparition. But I never saw anything more diabolically real in my life.”

Yet he was not quite reassured as he turned to continue his walk. The cloud had completely disappeared from The Skegs, vanished as suddenly as it had gathered there, nor was there a trace of vapour round the turret-like head—and the moonlight seemed to fall clearer upon the face of the cliffs.

He felt weary. He threw himself on the springy turf, heedless of damp or wet. A great, black fissure yawned at his feet, a gaping rent in the ground seeming to straggle into unknown depths. A few boulders lay about the little hollow where he rested. The fissure in front of him was known to the neighbourhood as Smugglers’ Ladder. Bats arose from the dark cleft and circled in the night air. The tide was in, and the lapping of the waves in the chasm beneath came up with a tuneful monotony through this gigantic telephone—but all else was silent as the grave. Far above twinkled the solemn stars, and the red, pointed moon looked angrily down. Then the distant chime from Wandsborough steeple rang out the hour of nine.

Only nine! Yet it might be midnight, so still and lifeless was this out-of-the-world hush. A soothing lethargy crept over him. Stillness—silence—rest. After the warring turmoil of a great city, this was as another world. But it was winter, and soon a shiver from head to foot reminded him that the more prosaic side of life, i.e. bed, had its attractions. A few minutes more and he would be on his way to Battisford, but a low whistle, unmistakably human, recalled in a trice his wandering reflections. It was repeated, and simultaneously the figure of a man appeared on the skyline.

The stranger did not move. He felt no apprehension, whoever the other might be. He was without hope in this world and therefore absolutely without fear, and so he sat with the lower part of his face resting in his hands, perfectly motionless, while the other approached him, saying in a low whisper:

“Why didn’t you answer my signal, dear?”

Then the stranger arose, with a harsh laugh.

“Ha-ha-ha! I’m afraid you’re the victim of a trifling ‘sell’ to-night, Hubert Dorrien.”

To say that the new-comer was astonished would be to say next to nothing at all. He was thunderstruck—speechless; and his face was as white as a sheet, as he stood rooted to the earth—gazing at this unexpected apparition as one transfixed.

“G-Good God! Who are you, sir, and what do you want with me?” he stammered at last.

“Ha-ha-ha! Good boy, Hubert. Good boy! Mother’s darling and papa’s expectant and deserving heir,” went on the stranger in the same harsh, jeering tone. “And now, may I ask, who is the fair frail one with whom this most delightful moonlight tryst was to have come off?” Excess of courage was at no time one of Hubert Dorrien’s besetting faults, and now he simply shivered, and his lips trembled. All of which the stranger noted as the moonlight played upon the white, terrified face.

“I don’t know who the devil you are, sir—and I don’t care,” he found courage to bluster at last. “But anyhow, I shall wish you good-evening, for I must go,” and he made a movement.

“But you are not going, Hubert Dorrien, not yet at least. Not until you and I have had a little talk together,” said the stranger, laying a firm hand upon his shoulder.

“Well, what do you want with me?” said Hubert doggedly, but horribly uneasy in his mind, for to his ordinary “prudent” disposition was now added the incubus of a tolerably guilty conscience. The place was hideously lonely withal, and his strange questioner looked powerful enough to have eaten him.

“Good boy, Hubert—ha-ha-ha! Does papa know you’re over here to-night, I wonder? But now—who were you expecting to find here?”

“Be damned to you!” broke out the young fellow furiously. “I’m not going to stand your impudent catechising. Go to blazes and find out. Oh—by God!”

For the stranger had turned his face full to the light, and, hiding the lower half of it, had removed his glasses.

”—Roland!”

And the two stood looking into each other’s eyes in the moonlight, and both faces wore any other expression than that of mutual affection. Yet they were brothers.

“Now that you have stepped into my shoes, Hubert, I hope they fit you,” said the elder, drily.

“Oh yes, thanks. Fit—very well indeed. More comfortable, by the bye, after a little further wear,” was the reply, given with a cold, exasperating grin.

“Which wear you won’t get out of them, my friend, in all probability. So look out for speedy squalls.”

“Oh, shan’t I?” replied the younger, his former fears dispelled, now that the mysterious stranger’s identity lay disclosed. “Shan’t I? Who will, then?”

“Why, their rightful owner, of course. Myself, to wit.”

“Good dog, Brag,” jeered the other contemptuously, jerking a stone across the mouth of Smugglers’ Ladder. Better for him had he kept up his prudence a little longer. “And now, Roland, I don’t come blundering in on top of your little arrangements up in Town, and should be very glad if you would kindly not interfere with mine here. In other words, by remaining in this sequestered spot you are spoiling my fun—if you have not already done so, that is.”

“Ah—now we are coming to it. Just answer me one question. What the deuce made you follow me over half the town one night last week, and then pretend you didn’t recognise me?”

“By Jove! It was you, then! I wasn’t sure, you see, and I couldn’t well buttonhole another fellow on spec. Besides you were with someone,” answered Hubert readily. But the other laughed drily.

“Not bad for you, Hubert. Shouldn’t wonder if you got your ‘silk’ after all, one of these days, if you go on as you have begun. And now, isn’t it a singular thing that a certain rumour should have started here at my expense, coincidently with that merry meeting of ours just by Westminster Bridge?”

“Very odd,” was the sneering rejoinder. “But the world’s devilish small, you know, and it’s astonishing how these little things will leak out.”

He ought to have known better. One glance at his brother’s face, and he would have spoken in a very different tone. But he was talking half-turned away.

“Quite so. It is. And now, O brother of mine, may I ask what motive you had in originating such a gratuitously mischievous and infernally backbiting story?”

Hubert’s first alarm had given way to exasperation and venomous resentment. Over and above inspiring him with considerable fear, this inconvenient brother of his had quite spoiled his little programme for the evening.

“Go to blazes and find out,” he answered again with an impudent sneer. “Or better still—ask Olive Ingelow what she thinks on the subject—Ha-ha-ha!”

But his laughter died, for with a furious curse the other had seized him by the throat. They were perilously near the edge of the chasm to indulge in a wrestling bout. And like a whisper from hell there flashed through the exile’s brain a vivid picture of all he had undergone from that sad parting scene in Wandsborough street to this hour, and probably she for whose sake he had given up all and was now an outcast had allowed her mind to be poisoned against him by the lying reports emanating from the slanderous tongue of this ungrateful and heartless young villain, this serpent who was his brother.

“Whisper her name again, and I’ll choke the life out of you,” he ejaculated, almost inarticulate with fury. But Hubert, exasperated beyond measure, forgot all his prudence.

“Yes, I will,” he shrieked, wrenching himself free.

“You asked just now who I was expecting to-night. What if it was the lovely Olive herself?”

But again the speaker’s voice failed him. Again his face went livid with deadly fear. He recoiled and would fain have fled before the terrible effect of his words. Behind lay the dark, yawning mouth of the chasm. His wild scream for help was choked in his throat. There was a fall—a scuffle and a slide. A human figure rolled down the sloping rock, with fingers convulsively clutching the merciless, unyielding stone, and face upturned to the cold moon in a paroxysm of deadly terror, then disappeared into the black chasm. A metallic sound as of stones dislodged striking against the sides of the fissure, then a dull splash far below and—silence.

He who was left upon the height above stood motionless for some minutes, his chest heaving and a perfect hell of fiendlike ferocity inflaming his countenance. Then he advanced to the edge of the fissure and peered fearlessly down. All was black as ink. Here and there the moonlight from without fell upon an angle of rock far beneath with a ghostly glint, but there was no sign of life—or death; nothing to tell that a human being had just been hurled down that terrific chasm to his last account. No accusing voice in the air—to proclaim aloud over the placid sea, to thunder forth from the hard, frowning cliffs—or even to whisper into the survivor’s ear the ghastly tale of this chill winter’s night—Murder.

And they two were brothers.

The survivor roused himself and looked keenly around. Were there no traces on the smooth turf that would connect him with the disappearance of the other when he should come to be missed and a search was made; no marks of feet upon the slippery rock? No, there were none. The moon’s cold eye alone had witnessed the deed—of which there remained absolutely no trace. Having assured himself of this, he readjusted his spectacles and walked rapidly away from the spot without once looking back.

Battisford was an old-fashioned place and “The Silver Fleece” was a snug and old-fashioned hostelry, where they kept early hours. Especially on Sundays was this the case, but on this particular Sunday our friend the loquacious waiter was deputed to sit up for the new guest—the gentleman who had gone over to church at Wandsborough. The service there would be over at any time after eight—say half-past, so that he should be back at a quarter-past nine or half-past at the latest. But it was slow work sitting up alone in the deserted coffee-room, and so it speedily came to pass that the talkative one followed the example of the five foolish virgins—slumbered and slept.

At length the stranger returned, and the first sound that greeted his ears as he let himself in and stood within the dimly lighted passage was a prolonged and unmistakable snore. Now in the said passage there stood a clock—a large timepiece of venerable aspect—and the hands of this clock were close upon a quarter-past ten. Whether it was a kind of instinct that prompted him to do so, or that he noticed that the glass was closed, but not shut—or both—cannot be here recorded, but in a moment he had opened the clock face, put the hands back forty minutes, and, having closed the glass again, proceeded carelessly in the direction of the snore.

“Hallo! Been sitting up for me?” he cried. “Early here, I suppose. Well, see if you can scare me up an S. and B., and that’s all I shall want to-night.”

Up jumped the drowsy one with a start.

“Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but I must ha’ dropped off,” he said, rubbing his eyes and making for the door. “Ah well, sir, I h’aint been long in a doze; it was after nine when last I looked at this blessed clock, and now it ain’t quite half-past yet, leastways it’s just over it.”

The other felt relieved. There was no fear of the man discovering the alteration of the hands if he had been asleep ever since nine, and it crossed his mind as just within the bounds of possibility that this circumstance might yet stand him in good stead.

“Just over half-past nine? So it is,” he said carelessly, as the waiter re-appeared with the brandy and soda. “I must have come quick, for it seemed to me a precious long way from Wandsborough.”

“You have come quick, sir. Did you come by the cliffs?”

“The cliffs! Is there a way by the cliffs, then?”

“Oh yes, sir, much shorter. But not over-safe at night, speshully to a gentleman as doesn’t know the country well.”

“H’m! I should think not. Likely to take a plunge over in the dark—eh? By the way, what’s the name of the verger at Wandsborough church? He seems a nice, civil sort of fellow. I rather liked the look of him, and he quite took me under his wing and looked after me. The bald-headed man.” This would show that he had been at Wandsborough.

“Brown, sir, it is. Oh yes, I know him well, he’s been there a matter o’ many years now. He’s a downright good honest chap, is Brown,” and then the loquacious one launched into a dissertation on the many good qualities and rare virtues of the official in question, which we shall spare the reader, even as he upon whom it was inflicted spared himself by promptly retiring to his room.

Next morning, while the grey-bearded stranger was leisurely discussing a late breakfast, the talkative waiter bustled in.

“Heard the news, sir? but of course you ’aven’t—seeing you’re only just up.”

“Quite right, my friend. And now, what’s the excitement?”

“Well, sir, they Bays as how young Mr Dorrien, he as we was talking about yesterday, he can’t be found nowhere,” said the man, hastening to discharge this last prime event with which his mind was burdened. “He went over to Cranston church by himself last night, and didn’t come home all night.”

“H’m! I don’t see anything very extraordinary in that. He may have had reasons of his own for being out all night, perhaps went somewhere by train, eh, don’t you see?—young men, you know, will be young men—and missed his train back.”

“No, sir, depend upon it there’s something wrong,” dissented the other, provoked at the stranger’s imperturbability. He had taken a great liking to him, “a pleasant-spoken, haffable gent as ever was, and yet a gent every hinch of him, as anybody might see” had been his verdict, in camera, with his colleagues below stairs. “Mistress Dorrien they say is that scared, and she’s going to have the country searched for him. He’s come to grief, ’e has. He carrier from Wandsbro’, he as brought the news—he says”—and here the man’s voice fell to what he intended to be a most impressive and mysterious whisper—“he says that one of them down at Minchkil Bay was coming home along the beach by moonlight and saw the Dorriens’ wraith on ‘The Skegs.’ The ghost always appears before the death of a Dorrien.”

The stranger looked quickly round as a violent shiver ran through him from head to foot.

“Just shut that door, will you? When the front door is open as well, the most infernal draught finds its way in here. It’s enough to give a man his death. Thanks. What were you saying? Something about a ghost?”

Only too delighted with the opportunity, our voluble friend proceeded redundantly to regale the stranger’s ears with the dour legend we heard narrated by very different lips nearly at the commencement of this narrative. But the listener proved sadly sceptical.

“Pooh!” he said, when the other had done. “That won’t wash at all, you know. It’s surprising how these humbugging old myths survive in the country, and the further away from Town you get, the more you find of them.”

“Beg pardon, sir, but shall you be leaving to-day?” asked the waiter, as the stranger rose from the table.

“No.”

“All right, sir. Glad to ’ear it, sir. Custom’s slack just now, sir.”

Chapter Thirty.

Search.

Great was the consternation which prevailed at Cranston Hall as the day wore on and Hubert did not return.

When first it was reported that his room was undisturbed and his bed had not been slept in, Mrs Dorrien’s chief care was to keep the knowledge from her husband, but soon her fears got the better of her prudence on her son’s behalf, and it became necessary to acquaint the General with the fact, with a view to a search being instituted.

Very sternly and concisely the latter at once proceeded to enquire into the circumstances of the case, but, beyond the fact that the missing one had left home with the expressed intention of attending evening service at Cranston Church, no one at the Hall could throw any light on the matter.

“I don’t know what could possibly have happened to Hubert between this and the village,” he said to his wife. “Why, it’s barely twenty minutes’ walk. I really don’t know what to think about it, Eleanor. It is extremely painful to be obliged to say so, but it looks strangely as if Hubert had started on an unlawful errand, inventing a pretext for covering it. I have not found him invariably truthful, you know.”

She burst into a storm of tears, her hard nature stirred to its very depths; her cold heart sorely wounded in its one vulnerable point.

“Oh, my boy, my boy?” she sobbed. “I shall never see you again, something tells me I shall not. And you”—turning fiercely upon her husband—“you were always so stern, so severe with him. He may have left his home, left it for good. Couldn’t you remember that he was young, and make allowances—and in delicate health? Yes, it is you who have driven him away, even as you drove away the other. Oh, my boy, my darling boy! I shall never see him again!”

A deep frown came over the General’s brow at this reproach.

“Pray calm yourself, Eleanor,” he said sternly. “The reproaches you allow yourself to make are most ill-chosen, and, in fact, inexcusable. However, to confine ourselves strictly to the matter in hand, I shall ride down at once to the village and make enquiries, and, if necessary, shall institute a search without delay.”

In less than an hour afterwards the General, aided by Mr Curtis, the vicar of Cranston, had elicited the following information. His son had been present at the village church the preceding evening, and had left with the congregation. Here testimony began to wax uncertain, some being ready to assert that they noticed Mr Hubert nearly at the park gates, while others were equally certain they had seen him going in the direction of Wandsborough. From this chaos of testimony it seemed impossible to evolve anything like order, and the General and his willing ally were nearly giving up all attempts at unravelling it, and starting in search of a fresh clue, when light came in upon the subject from an unexpected quarter.

A rustic couple was found who had been “sweet-hearting” in the lanes outside Cranston, according to the manner of rustic couples, after evening church. These were ready to swear that Mr Hubert had passed them, walking swiftly, and going in the direction of the cliffs. In fact, they had had the curiosity to turn and watch him. It was a cold, damp evening for any gentleman to be taking a walk on the cliffs all by himself, but why Mr Hubert should do so rather than return home was a speculation which aroused curiosity even in their thick, rustic pates. The pair, a stolid, bovine brace of bumpkins, were in great awe during the severe cross-questioning they underwent at the hands of the Squire and the Vicar, both magistrates to boot, but stuck tenaciously to the main point of their narrative. They were not mistaken, for not only had they seen Mr Hubert’s face distinctly in the moonlight, but they had wished him “good-night,” to which he had replied. As to time, well, about that they couldn’t be quite certain, they supposed it must have been about nine—or, if anything, rather earlier; but anyhow, not long after church.

It was clear that these people were the last who had seen Hubert, and convinced that now they were on the right track, though with a direful sinking of heart, the two gentlemen agreed that their next move must be to betake themselves to Minchkil Bay, and enlist the services of the hardy seafarers there in a regular search. If the missing man had found his way to the cliffs, as both feared he had, he might have fallen over. Possibly he might yet be alive, but in a situation of peril or difficulty, from which he could not extricate himself, and in this case the aid of these bold fishers, experienced cragsmen all, would be indispensable.

As they rode up to the little fishing colony they descried a group of three seated against a boat, and a tall young man leaning over them. All had their backs towards them, and were talking with animation, unaware of the approach of strangers, for the sound of the horses’ hoofs was deadened by the soft turf.

“But I say, Jem Pollock,” the young man was saying. “What did this affair really look like? It may have been a cloud, you know.”

“Well, you see, zur, it was a big black thing—yet not black so be it, but zumtimes you could see through it like. No, zur, it weren’t no cloud. Why, thur worn’t a cloud in the sky. And thur it was on top o’ The Skegs, and when I come ’ome I told Daddy here, and, ‘Jem,’ he says, ‘that what you’ve seen is the Dorrien wraith, and’—Oh, Lord, save us!”

All turned quickly. Not half a dozen yards off, the two gentlemen had reined in their horses. General Dorrien’s face was as white as a sheet, and the hand which held his bridle reins, though clenched and rigid, was trembling. That he had heard those last words was plain, but that one of his stern temperament should be so strangely moved by a mere bit of popular superstition seemed inexplicable.

“Your servant, gentlemen!” said old Mat Pollock, hobbling to his feet, assisted by his stalwart son, Jem, which worthy seafarer looked sorely abashed in the presence in which he so suddenly found himself, and which coming about, too, so soon upon his narrative of the apparition, disturbed his superstitious soul not a little.

Briefly, but clearly, Mr Curtis explained the situation, and how a search party was needed without delay, and the white-haired patriarch of the hamlet, though he had no love for the house of Dorrien, at once issued his mandates accordingly. Most of the hands were away in the boats, he said, but here were his two lads, Jem and David, who, by the way, had both well turned forty. Then they might turn out a couple of boys more—and there was—well, he didn’t know whether he might make so bold, but—And here he looked inquiringly at the young gentleman with whom the three had been conversing.

“I trust, Mr Curtis, that General Dorrien will allow me to take part in this search,” said Eustace Ingelow, stepping forward—“I know this coast thoroughly, and can keep my head at any height, as these good fellows here will tell you,” he added, eagerly looking from one to the other.

The General was about stiffly to decline, but Mr Curtis interrupted quickly.

“We shall be only too glad, Eustace. We want all the hands and eyes we can get, I’m afraid, and I know what a fellow you are for risking your neck. Are you ready?” he went on, looking around. “Then the sooner we start the better.”

It was between one and two o’clock, and the day was cloudy and lowering. Not many hours of daylight would remain to them, for the evenings closed in fast at this time of year. Considerable excitement was rife in the fishing village as the party moved off, women and children standing about the doors talking volubly in their rude dialect. It was arranged that Eustace Ingelow, with Jem Pollock and one of the boys, should accompany General Dorrien along the top of the cliffs, while David Pollock and the other boy and the parson thoroughly searched the beach below, both divisions moving in concert. A couple of powerful telescopes, three coils of rope, of sufficient stoutness and length, with two strong crow-bars, constituted the equipment of the party; nor must we omit to mention a flask of brandy, which Jem Pollock privately hinted to Eustace, with a wink at the General, might be making the Squire a party to a bit of smuggling.

And Eustace himself was thinking, as they ascended the steep, turfy slopes, what a great piece of luck this was which had fallen in his way. What if he should be the fortunate finder of the missing man? In common decency the General could hardly give him the cold shoulder after rescuing his son; but, on the other hand, it might be—probably would be—only the poor fellow’s dead body that they would find. For an opinion had gained ground among the party that Hubert Dorrien had either fallen over the cliffs, in which case there would be very little chance for him, or that he had gone down on the beach and had been cut off by the tide, a contingency equally fatal, the only hope being that in the former event he might have fallen on to a ledge—for the cliffs were broken and rugged, and such projections abounded; or that in the latter he had gained some refuge whence he was unable subsequently to escape.

“Look over, Jem, lad, and see if you see nowt. There, on the ledge just below the footway,” bawled David Pollock from the beach, after intently scanning with his glass the most dangerous point of the face of Hadden’s Slide. A thin mist had begun to drive along the cliff, but a black object, not unlike the body of a man, might be discerned at the point indicated.

Jem obeyed, and, lying down, peered long and anxiously from the dizzy brink.

“It’s nowt!” he shouted in return. “Only a heap o’ grass or suchlike,” and the search went on.

“I fear we shall soon be overtaken by the darkness,” observed the General, moodily looking round. They had passed a queer little cottage in the hollow, and a woman came out to answer their enquiries, but could add nothing whatever to their knowledge. Another false alarm, too, had been raised by those on the beach.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” answered Eustace. “But we shall have time to get as far as Smugglers’ Ladder,” he added encouragingly, “and I don’t think your son would have had time to get much further than that, if he intended coming back from his walk in fair time. See, it would be about in line with the point where he was last seen, and he was going in that direction.”

They reached the little hollow. Before and around lay a few rocks and boulders half embedded in the springy turf. A couple of hooded crows flew up and winged their flight downward along the face of the cliffs, uttering a harsh croak, and before them yawned the black chasm with its jagged, slippery sides. Both Eustace and Jem Pollock fearlessly gazed down into its depths.

Suddenly the former uttered an exclamation and sprang to his feet. On the very brink of the fissure, hanging to a short tuft of rank, dry herbage, was a piece of thin, black silk cord—such as is used for securing an eyeglass. Closer inspection showed that the grass itself had been violently crushed.

“I think we are getting nearer, sir,” he gently remarked, showing it to the General, who was visibly agitated, but made no reply. “Now, Jem, give us a light here, quick.”

The man obeyed, and forthwith large pieces of burning paper were dropped into the chasm, bringing its rocky facets and roughly-hewn cells and recesses into view to those above. Nothing was visible, however.

“Now, Jem, bear a hand with that belaying-pin; sharp’s the word,” cried Eustace, waxing nautical again in his excitement, as he took the stoutest of the crow-bars from the other’s hand, and looking around for a second, his quick eye lit upon a crevice in the rock, into which the iron bar was promptly driven. “Here! shake out that brace—that’s it. Now. Is it long enough?” anxiously, as Jem Pollock dropped the coil of rope into the chasm to test its length, keeping the other end in his hand.

“Not quite, sir, but the two together will do it, easily. But better let me go down, sir; I understand it better nor you.”

“I daresay you do, but I’m lighter, you see, and you’d make a better hand at working the apparatus up here than I should. Now heave it over!”

“What are you going to do?” asked General Dorrien, who had been a silent witness to these rapid preparations.

“I’m just going quietly down the Ladder, sir,” answered Eustace. “The poor fellow may have got into some place where we can’t see him, and not be able to call out.”

“Really, Mr—a—Ingelow—I can’t consent to your running this risk,” answered the General, greatly moved. “Now, this man is accustomed to it. Therefore let him go down.”

“No risk at all, sir, I assure you. Only an easy climb. I wish it might be successful,” answered Eustace, as he threw off his jacket, and, aided by the fisher lad, let himself carefully over.

“You’ll ha’ to be quick down there, ’cause of the tide,” warned Jem Pollock, who was devoting his energies to keeping the crow-bar steady. “You can’t come up again this way, I’m thinkin’. And jes’ tell them down there to hurry a bit, for she’s a rollin’ in fast and steady.”

“All right,” cried Eustace as he made his way down. The rope was a regular climbing rope, knotted at intervals; but the depth was considerable, and before he had got halfway, the athletic young fellow began to feel that he would need all his powers. Indeed, although he had made light of any idea of risk in the matter, he now realised that there was plenty of it. The perspiration streamed from every pore, and it was all he could do at times to avoid being hurled from his dizzy position by the swaying of the rope and the consequent friction of his knuckles against the hard surface of the rock.

Although dark enough from above, yet once in the fissure, sufficient light penetrated from the outside to render all its recesses plainly visible, and as the intrepid youth made his way down deeper and deeper, the more strongly did the conviction take hold of him that he would indeed find Hubert Dorrien at the bottom, but it would be in the form of a shattered, ghastly and unrecognisable corpse. Not an encouraging or nerve-steadying reflection for one in his perilous position, but Eustace Ingelow, with his brave heart and good conscience, felt that it would take more than this to cause his nerve to fail. And now all sounds were hushed, and save for the laboured breathing of the climber and the occasional rattle of dislodged stones, falling with a hollow echo to the bottom of the abyss, the silence was almost oppressive.

“Is he safe?” whispered the anxious father to Jem Pollock, as the sound of something heavy reaching the ground was borne upward.

“Ay, sir, he is,” replied the other gravely. The stout fisherman had never ceased to reproach himself for allowing a lad like that to venture upon such an errand while he himself remained safe at the top. What would he find down there, he wondered?

And Eustace was thinking the same, as, very much exhausted, he thankfully realised that his feet were once more on solid ground. His heart beat fast and irregularly as he peered about in the dim half light, expecting every moment to meet with a horrible sight. But the cave was empty. A big crab sidled away into a dark corner, with its formidable nippers extended, menacingly, and shoals of smaller ones ran spiderlike into the little pools of water left by the tide in the rocks and sand. The green, slimy walls were hung with seaweed and studded with pointed limpets, but of anything human there was no trace.

No trace. Stay—what was that? A gleam of something caught his eye—something that lay half-buried in the sand. He picked it up, and his heart gave a great jump. It was a small and curiously-wrought silver matchbox.

A shout outside and Mr Curtis and his party joined him. In the flurry of his excitement and the exhaustion following upon his perilous and violent exertions, Eustace handed over his discovery to the vicar. The next moment he would have given anything to have kept it quietly to himself. Why, he could not for the life of him have told—one of those strange and most unerring instincts.

“I fancy there’s no doubt now as to the poor fellow’s fate,” said Mr Curtis. “He must have fallen from above, and even if he lived after it, must have been carried away by the tide. See, the high-water mark is a good many feet above our heads as we stand here.”

They looked up. It was as he said. Even at the highest point in the fissure, wherever they could stand, the wet slimy water-line was beyond their reach. A shout was heard above, and Jem Pollock’s face could be seen peering over the brink.

“The tide!” he shouted. “Get away out o’ that as fast as ever ye can. She’s a comin’ into the bight like a racer, and it’ll take ye all your time.”

No further warning was necessary, and they hastened to act upon this one. Hubert Dorrien’s sad fate was established beyond doubt, and unless his body was ultimately washed up on the beach, he would be no more seen until the day when the sea should give up her dead.

An hour later the party joined hands on the cliff. Further search was useless, for it was now quite dark. Next day it might be continued; and then it would be not for the living, but for the mangled remnants of the dead.

“I have greatly to thank you, Mr Ingelow,” said the General, his face very white and set and his speech forced. “Your help has been most valuable, and of the courage and energy you have displayed I cannot think too highly. And to you, too, my men, I must tender my thanks for your efforts towards the rescue or recovery of my unfortunate son. I cannot talk more about it at present, but you may be sure I shall not forget it. Good-night.”

He extended his hand to Eustace, who warmly grasped it.

“Believe me, General Dorrien, I would gladly have done more to have met with better success,” he said in a tone of sympathetic respect. And Eustace, in the midst of that sorrowful scene, could not feel so depressed as he told himself he ought, for athwart it there smiled upon him, though mournfully now, Nellie’s sweet face, and he felt she was nearer within his reach than he had of late so much as dared to dream.

The party separated on the dark cliff’s brow and the General and Mr Curtis rode sadly home.

And that night in the stately mansion a bitter cry went up, and the voice of great mourning—a mother sorrowing for her lost and passionately loved son, whose voice she was destined never again to hear on this side of the grave.

Chapter Thirty One.

“Death’s Altar, by the Lone Shore.”

A fortnight had slipped away since Hubert Dorrien’s disappearance, and still the stranger stayed on at “The Silver Fleece,” in Battisford. Those who had at first marvelled what attraction their dull little town had for one of his stamp had quite ceased speculating as to his pursuits and identity. As to the former, they had come to the conclusion that he was an antiquary of some sort—a professor most likely, and a member of some learned society—who was engaged on a work on the curiosities and antiquities of the neighbourhood, which he spent long days in exploring, asking many questions about it, and when not thus employed, he would shut himself up and sit for hours writing. As to the latter, well, it didn’t signify. Anyone could see that he was a gentleman born, and sure enough, didn’t he pay his way, and wasn’t he pleasant-spoken and friendly with everybody? So “The Silver Fleece” was right glad of its guest, and would fain keep him as long as he chose to stay. He got his letters, too, quite regularly, addressed to Robert Durnford, Esq, and now and then a learned looking pamphlet. What more could Battisford desire in the way of vouchers for his respectability?

In Battisford, sooner than in Wandsborough, Hubert Dorrien’s sad fate ceased to be a nine days’ wonder. It was talked of occasionally on market days by farmers assembled at their one o’clock dinner in the coffee-room at “The Silver Fleece,” and in the evening sometimes the loquacious waiter would entertain a batch of newly arrived “commercials,” over their hot spirits and water, with a highly graphic narrative of the event, to which the accompaniment of the supernatural lent unusual spice. Sometimes in these conversations the stranger would join, putting in a careless remark or two, or asking a question, but never by any chance would he attempt avoidance of the subject.

And what was Roland Dorrien’s real frame of mind, having committed a ruthless and what the world might call a cowardly murder! It is a strange thing to have to record, but the fact is he felt no great compunction. He had spent some of the most impressionable years of his life in the Far West, where human life was held at the lowest possible valuation, and he had known of at least a dozen instances where men had been shot dead upon far less provocation than he had received. Besides, he had not particularly meant to kill the other; unfortunately, the mouth of the fissure had been inconveniently close.

But he whom he had slain was his brother—his own mother’s son. Well, what of that? Relationship was a mere accident, in his case an accident in no sense to his advantage, and all the twaddle written and talked about blood being thicker than water, and family affection and so on, but the “thinnest” of cant. And had not this precious brother of his, not content with supplanting him in his inheritance, taken advantage of his downfall to blacken his name, so that she whom he loved and who had loved him as he felt persuaded she would never again love, even she had, in all probability, brought herself to regard his memory as a loathsome thing; something to be put far from her? Then, to crown all, those insulting words. Yes—whatever had occurred, the other had brought upon himself and had richly deserved, and now, as it happened, it was perhaps as well that the popular verdict should be one of accidental death.

And had this man no conscience? Since there was no chance of his being brought to the bar of human justice, had he no fear of the great Hereafter? He had none. He could meet it, whatever it was, without flinching. If he did not altogether disbelieve in a future existence, he was at any rate firmly convinced that for himself it could hold no worse state of things than did the present. That was impossible, for he was utterly without hope in the world.

And now he had made up his mind to leave Battisford. He had remained there long enough to avoid the suspicion that would inevitably have attached to a casual stranger coming and going coincidently with the fatality—now he would go. He had not seen Olive Ingelow since the brief glimpse he had obtained of her in the lamp-lit street that fateful evening, and it was better so. He was hard as adamant now, cold, stony—all his natural impulses petrified at their source. One glance into those sweet eyes: one pitiful, tender tone of the dear voice, and all might be undone. He would soften again, melt for the time, and his overthrow would be complete. No, he would not behold her face again, but he would once more, and for the last time, revisit Wandsborough, arriving towards nightfall, and then the next day he would leave the scene of his wrecked life for ever.

There are some men whom one is constrained to believe were sent into the world to enjoy prosperity, if only for the reason that they are so woefully and completely unfitted to sustain adversity. We must fall foul of another popular cant in asserting that adversity does not strengthen them, neither does it bring out sterling qualities which otherwise would never have seen the light. In no way does it benefit them; on the contrary, they succumb to it and sink down, down, lower and lower, till their ruin is complete. In some occult way this may be a Providential dispensation; we are told that everything is; but, if so, why then to the observer of human nature is it of all things the most marvellous?

Just such a man as this was Roland Dorrien. His rightful place in society he would have filled with credit—it is even probable that under favourable circumstances he would have adorned it; for he had plenty of good qualities, which, in their proper sphere, would have shone out to the advantage of himself and of those who came within his influence. But he was the last person in the world who should have been marked out for adversity, and with his natural temperament and the fatal way in which he had been brought up, or rather left to grow, it was no wonder that he succumbed.

What man but one who had temporarily taken leave of his better judgment—not to say his senses—would have mapped out for himself such a plan as that which he now proposed? To revisit the scenes of his former prosperity; to wander morbidly over the paths consecrated to his memory by the tenderest associations of love and happiness and bright hopes, knowing perfectly well that the joys of past days must ever be to him as the turned-down page of a sealed book—could mania itself carry a man to greater, to more unreasoning lengths? Yet this is what he deliberately resolved to do.

He would walk along the beach to Wandsborough. The tide was low in the afternoon, and he would be less likely to meet anybody that way. So, arming himself with an overcoat and umbrella, for the day was cloudy and lowering, he sallied forth.

A group of men were standing round the door of the taproom as he passed. Of them he took no notice at first, till a voice arrested his attention—a voice saying in a strong Scotch accent:

”—And I tell ye what it is, Williams. Ye just won’t see the young Squire back again. The General hates him wurrse than hell, and ’d sooner burrn the place down than see him in it, even nouw.”

For the life of him Roland could not resist turning his head, and his eyes met those of Johnston, the Cranston gardener. Then he kept on his way. Had the other recognised him? he wondered. Their glances had met full. The Scot was a shrewd fellow, and his gaze might have penetrated even this inimitable disguise. If so, why, the sooner he disappeared from Battisford the better, for if it was in Johnston’s power to work him mischief he would certainly do so—and it was. But it would not do to look round again, and, after all, why should he care?

He walked rapidly forward, and soon the town was left out of sight behind. A few sheep browsing the short grass on the turfy down scampered off a little distance and stood watching him as he made his way to the beach; but not a soul did he meet, and at length, as he reached the shore, it seemed to him that he stood in the world alone. He walked on, a great seething, tumbling plain on his left, the white, curling billows chasing each other obedient to the propulsion of a strong and freshening breeze, their foam-crests leaping to the misty sky. A flying scud partly hid the tall cliffs, and then passed, and the crescent-like bays and looming promontories of the iron coastline stood clear above the restless, leaden-hued waters. A scene of wild, solitary grandeur. The cold salt breeze played upon his face; the roll and hiss of the white waves breaking on the beach seemed full of voices speaking from that happier Past as the exile wended his way along the lone shore; and in the tones of the rising gale he could hear in a far-off, dreamy way the voice as he had heard it when they walked together over this very ground.

All the deepest chords in the man’s wretched, storm-tossed soul were harrowed and unstrung. This wild reach of roaring surf, and looming cliffs, and pebbly shingle, with the strong, chill winds resisting his advance, was to him as hallowed ground—to be trodden reverently, and to be lingered on as one is loth to leave the last haven. His head was bent low to resist the fury of the sudden gust which met him as he staggered round a projecting arm of the cliff, and his thoughts were given up to the free play of wildest fancy.

“God or demon—whoever you are that makes such a wretched muddle of the affairs of poor mortals,” he murmured in his despair, “take my soul—my life—anything—and plunge it in torments untold for all the ages if you will. Only bring her to me—here—let me see her here for one short half-hour!”

He was hardly conscious of having spoken aloud. It seemed to him but one among many unuttered wishes; and now, as he looked up, his face became ashy and his eyes were fixed, staring and dilated, while he stood rooted to the spot, unable to stir a limb. For not twenty yards off, alone in this remote spot, in the misty twilight of the darkening afternoon, stood the figure of a woman. She was leaning lightly upon a low rock, with one small, shapely hand, gazing out to sea. Her delicate profile was towards him, but there was a mournfulness in the sweet, sad face, and the repose of the mouth was that of one who had well-nigh forgotten how to laugh. A tress or two of soft, dark hair had escaped, and with this the wind was playing wild havoc. Yet she was heedless of it and of all around, and stood there calm and undisturbed, like a beautiful goddess of the wild stormy coast.

His invocation had been answered.

“Olive?”

His voice came harsh and inarticulate. She turned, startled at the strange sound, though not catching the name, and her face paled. Who could this intruder be? She was alone with him and at his mercy, and he looked so wild and queer. She was very frightened, and for a moment all manner of horrid conjecture flashed through her brain. She felt sickly and faint. An escaped lunatic, was one of her first thoughts, having dismissed the tramp theory—and she noticed that he was tall and strong of build, and well-dressed, withal. And he was approaching her.

“Have you lost your way?” she began gently, striving hard to repress the apprehensive tremor in her voice.

“Olive! Don’t you know me?”

With a low cry she sank down on the rock, and sat gazing wildly at him with a white, scared face.

“It is his voice—Roland!”

The spell was broken. He was beside her, and his arms were round her while he poured into her ears passionate words of tender reassurance. And it would be difficult to determine which of the two was most startled by the unexpected meeting.

“My love—my love! Why did you leave me all this long time?” she murmured at last.

Not an intonation of reproach towards himself on her account, only on his own, as if she had said, “Why did you leave me—your haven of refuge when the storm came upon you? Why did you leave me, who would have cleaved to you in adversity—who would have clung to you through evil report a hundred times closer than through good?”

“Yes—why did I?”

He had removed his glasses, and stood before her his old self—but such a shadow of it! She was horrified.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” she said. “Have you been trying to die?”

Then he laughed—a harsh, bitter laugh. It rang back from the cliffs in weird, mocking echo.

“Oh, no. The Fates are not so kind. Why did I leave you, you say? Everything was against us. Your father would not listen to me, even when I had my head above water—how could I expect him to when it was below, with no prospect of ever rising to the surface again? You, yourself, would never have acted contrary to his wishes, even if I had been in a position to urge you to—and for this I should be the last to blame you, understand that, well. But for me, an utterly ruined man, to hold you bound to me for life, was just the one thing I could not do.”

“Go on.”

“Well, we never saw each other again after that informal parting in Wandsborough street,” he went on. “I hoped—I mean I tried to hope—you would forget me and be happy again. After all, why should you not? Only three or four short months—a summer dream.”

His voice was harsh and grating. At times it seemed that he would choke.

“A summer dream! My whole life was lived within that summer dream,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Roland, you will not leave me again!”

His haggard eyes devoured the sweet face which was bent down upon his hands, and he felt that if hell itself opened to receive him its torments would be rest compared with what he was undergoing at that moment. The pleading voice, the little hands imprisoning his own as she leant upon him, giving herself to him as it were in all the rich fulness of her love—this for which he had hungered and agonised, sleeping and waking, during the long weary period of his hopeless exile, and which, now that he had obtained it, he must deliberately forego. In one short hour, in fact, he would be apart from her, in bitter loneliness once more. No—there was no hope. His pride was a part of himself. Penniless and an outcast, how could he keep for himself and wear this priceless jewel? And now he was something more—he bore a burden that not all the untold wealth of ages could take from him. And yet at this moment he felt as if he could imbrue his hands in the most pitiless of crimes, to obtain the wealth which should save them both.

“My darling, you will not leave me again!”

Not the scud in the dark, lowering sky above—not the wild waves plunging and careering before the shrieking wind, to hurl themselves madly upon yonder sharp rocks—not the whirl of air and water and vaporous cloud, was more storm-tossed and chaotic than the thoughts which surged through the man’s soul, and flashed with well-nigh the fires of mania in his overwrought brain. His reply came—hoarse and labouring.

“I must.”

The sweet, sad face sank down upon his hands, which her own were grasping with an almost convulsive clutch, and a shiver like a great choking sob ran through her. She had found him—the wanderer whom everybody else had lost sight of. She had found him, as was her right, for he belonged to her. She had found him—how then could she let him wander from her again, away into the outer darkness of the cold, wide world! All too lightly had she valued those days in the by-gone past, until they had fled, never to return.

O fairest summer, with thy many-hued glories of rich verdure, and heathery-crimson and golden-tinted hills keeping watch above an azure sea! O halcyon time, of vows whispered amid the radiance of a passing glow from Heaven’s bright plains, as the westering sun drove his great amber-wheeled chariot down to his rest, shedding back an ethereal lustre upon a love-dawn which should lend a hundredfold more of beauty to a beauteous world—where are you now? Gone. And you—leaden waves, tossing wildly to the misty wrack above—storm-blast howling o’er the watery waste—cliffs spectral and grey, throwing back with hollow echo the surges’ tone—to you it is given, in mocking fitness, to behold the anguish of two breaking hearts, here on the lone seashore!

“It was never intended we should part again,” she murmured without looking up. “Oh! why should you have been brought here to-day? I never visit this place now, and to-day it must have been something more than chance that made me do so.”

“I don’t believe in your Heaven, or why should it delight to torture any living creature as it is torturing us, here, to-day,” broke jerkily from his set, dry lips. “Listen, Olive—darling, and you will understand why I must leave you again. I am destitute at this moment, utterly destitute; one who has gone down beneath the weight of what some might call a curse—but I don’t believe in such things. And above and beside all this there is—there is—a barrier between us—a barrier of my own raising, and with its shadow I would never cloud your dear life.”

“Oh, Roland. What is it?”

“Ah! If I were to tell you, you would shrink from me, now and for ever. You would even rush into yonder sea to escape from the horror wherewith my presence would inspire you. Why, even your love would turn to repugnance. Yet why should it?—except that the trammelled imagination of a canting world reads crime into what is no crime at all.”

“You are quite wrong. I would do none of all this,” she answered bravely. A horrid suspicion that the rumours she had heard about him might be true flashed through her mind. What if he had done in a moment of weak desperation that which nothing but death could undo?

“I had never expected to look upon your dear face again,” he went on in the same tones of heart-wrung misery. “I set out this day to visit for the last time the scenes we had looked upon together, and to break my heart over the memories that they would evoke. Then, as I trod these stones which your feet had trodden, as on holy ground, I invoked the aid of the demon who rules the universe—offering my life and limitless future of eternity, if such there be—for one glimpse of you. And I was answered. I looked up and there you stood. Now I care nothing for what may happen. I can face it without fear—for my prayer was answered.”

Her tears were falling like rain, and for some time she could not speak—could only cling to him all the firmer.

“You shall not go,” she said at length. “You belong to me. A hundred times more than when all things went well with you. Oh, my darling, do not leave me. I claim you now, for you belong to me!” she reiterated passionately.

It may be that to some lives comes a period such as that which these two had to undergo at this moment; it cannot be that it comes to many. But even while she spoke, another had claimed them both—ay, and had already made good his claim. With swift, remorseless subtlety the dark waves came sweeping in. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of his awful bargain—and to exact it with interest.

“Olive, come. We must go, and go quickly.”

She gazed at him in surprise. His tone had changed to one of calmness, almost indifference, except for a quick anxiety, which her ear detected.

“It will be all we can do to turn the corner over there before the water is even knee-deep.”

She followed his glance, and her face paled slightly. Nearly a mile of beach lay between them and the jutting headland, whose base even now was all but hidden by the inflowing tide. As the waves receded, a few yards of ground were left visible, but the next roller or two swept over it completely, breaking into angry foam against the rock. Full well she knew—full well both of them knew—the perilous nature of the coast, for every year added its quota to the list of victims of the treacherous tides.

“We shall never do it, Roland.”

“We must try. Come along.”

He hurried her forward, and, with the aid of his strong right arm, she had no difficulty in keeping pace with him. But the beach was pebbly and yielding, and before they had gone a hundred yards the consciousness broke upon them that the desired point would be ten or twelve feet under water by the time they should reach it.

“Can’t be done. We must give it up,” he said anxiously, coming to a halt. “Our only chance is to try back. The beach is not so narrow on the Battisford side. We must look sharp, too, or the point behind us will be covered.”

The treacherous waves were creeping up to the promontory he had come round. To remain where they were was hopeless, for in less than an hour the whole of the bay would be completely swept by the sea, which would be breaking against the cliffs many feet higher than their heads as they then stood.

“Now, Olive! It is our only chance.”

Breathless and panting from the pace at which she had come over the heavy yielding ground, Olive resigned herself with a shiver to be half dragged, half carried through the belt of milky surf which barred their passage round the rocky promontory, and it was all her companion could do to support her and keep his own footing amid the powerful wash and swirl of the receding waves, for he had been obliged to watch his opportunity and make a dash through between the inflowing waves, and, being knee-deep in water, with the pebbly ground beneath his feet, uncertain and shifting in the treacherous “undertow,” the wonder is that both were not carried away there and then. Yet it was only putting off the evil hour. Two minutes later and they stood within the next bay.

A quick, despairing ejaculation escaped Roland’s lips. He had miscalculated his distance, and now the strip of beach by which he had reckoned they would be able to effect their escape was a mass of great rolling breakers. To retrace their steps was impossible, even were it of any use. There was no more means of exit from this bay than from the one they had just left. They had but exchanged one death-trap for another.

Then they stood still and stole a furtive look at each other, and all hope died away within their hearts. To the mind of each there came the same thought. The man’s wild prayer and desperate vow had been heard and answered. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of the awful bargain—and to exact it with interest—and the great, cruel sea, which alone had witnessed and registered the reckless vow, was now lending itself and its rage a willing instrument for the pitiless fulfilment of that vow.

Chapter Thirty Two.

In the Valley of the Shadow.

“Olive, it is I who have brought you to your death!”

His face was ghastly with the horror of his self-reproach and desperation. The two were standing now, locked in each other’s embrace, beneath the cliff, watching the narrow strip of beach rapidly disappear as the fierce tide came pouring in. Nothing could be seen immediately above, for the rock beetled overhead as though about to topple upon them, but running out on each side of the bay rose a crescent of frowning wall. And from thence no succour need be expected, for its summit was lost in the gathering mist. The winter twilight was fast descending, the chill blast howled and shrieked over the heaving, storm-lashed main, and a chaos of driving, leaping billows, whose great leaden backs and white rearing crests rose hideous and spectral in the gloaming as they dashed the one upon the other in their tumultuous rush, flinging themselves high against the adamantine walls and falling back with a roar and a hiss. The grim coastline was enveloped in wreathe of white spray, and the surf-lashed base of the heights rang again as it repelled the onset of each watery monster, while in showers of milky foam the sea ran from the black, slippery rocks. A scene of wild grandeur, unparalleled in its tremendous loneliness—a terrible scene, even when viewed from a point of safety. What must it then have been to the two who stood there awaiting an inevitable death!

“It is I who have brought you to this!” She looked up at him and nestled more closely in his embrace. In the midst of her bodily fear—the natural fear of a weak woman suddenly brought face to face with a horrible death—she was able to smile. And it was a smile of unselfish reassurance.

“No, dearest. It is not your doing,” she said. “If it had not been for finding me here, you would have gone your way in safety. Roland—it is I who have destroyed you.”

“By heaven—no!” he broke in passionately. “I would sooner die with you than live without you. But nothing can get rid of the fact that it is owing to me that you are here at all. You, for whom I would have given five hundred lives—would have lost the salvation of a thousand souls to see in safety now. Oh, my darling—my heart’s sweet love—will not your God again take me at my word and work a miracle to save only you!” he added with a despairing, bitter cry, as he sank upon his knees at her feet, still clasping her with both his arms.

She bent her face down till it rested against his, and her soft, caressing hands were round his neck.

“Hush—my own!” she said. “Do not talk in that desperate way. A very little while, and we shall be united to part no more. We—you especially—have been terribly tried; now we are about to pass through the waters of death, but our sweet Saviour is very merciful. He will not part us again.”

Her calm courage and the solemn conviction of her tender tones seemed to breathe a halo of peace amid that jarring scene of storm and chaos. Their faces were wet with the showers of salt spray, and the girl’s soft hair, partially unfastened, was tossed rudely about by the cutting wind. The thunder of the surf upon the shore and the shrieking of the fierce gale drowned all other sound, yet in an interval in the turmoil, her voice could be heard fervently praying. She pleaded that if it was agreeable to the Divine Will they might be rescued from their imminent peril, but if not, and it was appointed to them now to pass through the awful waters of death, that grace might be given them both patiently to undergo whatever period of penance might be necessary to their purification, so that they might at last be united, never again to part, safe in the Heavenly Country. Then, with her head upon her lover’s shoulder, his arms around her, and her hands in his, it seemed to Olive Ingelow that the world was very far away, and she could await with perfect resignation the short but terrible struggle which should set them both free.

Rolling in, huge and awful in the dim gloaming, the mighty billows roared nearer and nearer, hurling great masses of milky foam at their very feet. They could hardly see each other’s face in the weird, sepulchral light.

“Roland, we are close to Smugglers’ Ladder, are we not?”

He started at the sound of her voice, in which there was a ring of hope.

“Quite close. Why?”

“Is there no chance of escape that way?”

He shook his head sadly.

“None whatever. I had thought of that, but it seemed better to—to face the worst here in the open than to be drowned like rats in a hole. Why, the tide runs up it like a mill-race.”

He had thought of it, and now her suggestion revived the ghastliness of the idea. What a terrible revenge of Fate! Come what might there could be no hope. Had the awful Shape been seen upon The Skegs again? Would not men be discussing the apparition with bated breath the next morning as the chill dawn revealed to the eyes of the devoted searchers two drowned corpses? Could this legion of leaping, hungry billows be the same blue, smiling, peaceful sea, on whose shore they two had sat together, when from Olive’s lips he first heard about the drear tale of violence and revenge which overshadowed the spot as with a curse. If he were to meet his end in that place of all others? Then another idea struck him. They might by singular good luck find some ledge that would place them above the reach of the waters. He himself had no such hope, but it was just barely possible.

“It is our only chance,” he continued, “and the very poorest of poor ones. But come; we will try it.”

On they sped, straining every nerve to reach the great jagged rent in the cliff, which they could see not far ahead. Farther than they thought, though, for as they stood within its dismal portals, the advance-guard of the tide already swirled knee-deep around them.

Gloomy and terrible in the extreme was the aspect of the chasm. The last faint light from without, straggling through, here and there fell upon the black, slippery rock, and the bellowing of the surf as it came dashing in, white and seething, was echoed in hollow clamour up the sides of the abyss. No light was visible above, and the atmosphere within this hideous cave hung cold and dank as the breaths of the grave. And upon the man who knew the grisly secret which these slimy walls had witnessed and had kept so well, the horrors of the place weighed an hundredfold. The outer darkness; the roaring and hissing of the great surges; the shriek of the gale and the flapping of the long wisps of seaweed against the face of the rock; all were as accusing voices—the exultant gibbering of demons come to claim their just due—and it seemed to his overtaxed brain that ghostly hands were stretched forth to drag him to his everlasting woe. A cold sweat was on his brow and his knees trembled under him. Were it not that a most precious life depended on his exertions, he would have yielded up the struggle then and there, and have plunged headlong into the boiling surf.

It was of no avail. They had immured themselves in their living tomb. A dozen great seas came sweeping in one after the other, and the chasm was a mass of white, churning water dashing backwards and forwards with resistless velocity. They had retreated as far as they could go, and now stood up to the waist in water. The very next wave would carry them off their feet—and then—

It came—crashing high against the cliff overhead, and whirling back with lightning speed. Then another and another, and Roland Dorrien was struggling in the surge—alone.

Oh, the agony of that moment! Even while battling wildly for a minute more of dear life, the awful, aching void of separation was the only consciousness he retained—that he was not to be allowed even to die with her hand clasped in his. We know that a man can dream the events of hours in as many seconds. In this fleeting moment this man endured an eternity of everlasting woe. He was separated from her in death—he would be separated from her in the future life—and his lot would be among the lost for ever.

Then his senses began to fail. He was hurled to and fro, there was a roaring in his ears; he was sinking—down, down, down—then up again into black space. Then he struck against hard rock—his footing was firm. Instinctively he threw out his hands and grasped something long and trailing; the waters fell back, and with a mighty effort he resisted their suction. He was on a ledge.

But Olive? Had the Eternal Vengeance spared him and taken her life? Was she drowned and dead in that hell-cave while he wae doomed to live? No—a thousand times no!

And then a cry, so awful and blood-curdling in its unspeakable agony, rang out above the thundrous turmoil in that grisly cave, as surely was never emitted from human breast before. It rose above the bellowing of the mighty surges, it rang upward through the black sides of the chasm, with many a weird echo—upward into the outer air—upward, till assuredly it must have mounted to the very throne of high Heaven.

“Great God! Great God! Spare her and take me!” But a grim spectre stood at his side—only a voice from the pit of the grave answered in his ear:

“Life for life. Blood for blood. Live on, accursed one, but her thou shalt never behold again in this world or in that which is to come. Never—never!”

The survivor stood for a moment on the edge of the black, slippery rock, straining his haggard eyes as he strove to pierce the gloom through which the white, seething foam was dimly rushing.

“Never—never!” he shouted, with a maniacal laugh, and poising himself he leaped headlong into the surf.

What was that? As he rose, something came in contact with him. It was a human body, limp, lifeless. A thrill of the most exquisite relief shot through his heart. He had found her. And now he felt that he had the strength of a hundred men. Half-a-dozen powerful, yet judicious strokes—for to be dashed against the rock would be fatal—and he was again grasping the ledge. A wave swept up, lifting them high in the air, but he clung to his hold with the tenacity of despair, and then, before he knew how it was done, he was crouching on the ledge, holding the girl’s insensible form in his arms.

Was she dead? Ah, no. He could hear her faint, regular breathing as he pressed his lips to hers. Wave after wave swept their precarious refuge, but now he was filled with a new hope. They had been spared for a purpose. Even if they were to die they would die together, and this reflection was sufficient to fill him with the keenest bliss after the awful agony of that moment of separation.

With one foot planted firmly against a projection in the rock, and grasping with both hands the slender and precarious hold which the seaweed and rock afforded above, Roland Dorrien crouched there for two long hours in the pitchy darkness, supporting the girl’s unconscious form. Waves surged over them, and more than once it was all he could do to avoid being swept from the slanting ledge, and his muscles cracked as he strained every nerve to resist the potent suction of the receding seas. For two long hours he dared not move a finger or alter his position by a hair’s breadth, and his laboured breathing was loud and stertorous in the intervals between the howling of the waves in the cavernous gloom and the hollow, metallic echoes, like the booming toll of a great bell, which thundered from the overhanging rocks. At length, when his exhausted strength threatened to bear no more, he suddenly realised that the onslaughts of the waves were becoming less frequent, and their force when they did come was weaker. Surely the tide had turned.

Chapter Thirty Three.

Cain.

“Are you here, Roland?”

The tone was the faintest of whispers, but the voice was as if the silvern echoes of heavenly harps had suddenly been wafted to the listener’s anxious ear. He could hardly murmur a reply.

“Where are we? How dark it is!” continued she, in an awed whisper.

“We are safe.”

“Safe?—Oh, I remember.”

“Don’t talk yet, my darling. Lie still and let yourself be perfectly at rest, as much so as you can, that is, in this uncomfortable attitude. We shall have to hold on here for some time longer.”

“But you?”

“Never mind me. Wait. That’s better now,” shifting his position. And, indeed, it was a real relief—so great had been the strain upon his powers.

“Now try to sleep,” he continued. “We shall have to stay here for some time; in fact, it will be difficult to get down in the dark. We were literally washed up here—and here we had better stay.”

Though the seas no longer reached their place of refuge they still surged angrily through the chasm. Olive shivered.

“How cold it is!” she said faintly.

“Yes. Take a ‘nip’ of this. It is absolutely necessary!” he said, unscrewing the top of a small brandy flask.

She obeyed, for she felt very faint and exhausted. The potent cordial restored her a little and sent the blood coursing through her veins with renewed life.

“There! Fortunate I had it with me,” he went on. “And now, darling, you must sleep if you can. You will be perfectly safe until they find us, for they will be sure to send out a strong search party.”

“Poor dear father will be so horribly frightened. Roland, how soon can we go to him?” she asked faintly.

He made no reply at first. The question had called back his thoughts to the hard world again, to such as he more pitiless than the billows from which they had miraculously escaped, colder than the chill wind which whistled through the great dark vault. The exile’s soul was bitter within him again. They two had gone down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death together, and had emerged thence, only to be parted once more.

“It will not be safe to go from here—until they find us,” he replied. “But only think of the relief your father will experience when he finds you are safe! Why, it’ll be worth while going through the suspense he is in at the present moment. While I—”

He checked himself. No words could depict the awful desperation which lay upon this man’s soul at that dark hour. All his hopes in this life were dead—his very life itself was forfeited, could be claimed at any moment—and in the next he had little, if any, belief—certainly no hope. Why had the sea spared him, why had it not taken them both together, or, at any rate, him? Why was he not lying at rest for ever far beneath the tossing billows—beyond the reach of the storms and whirlwinds of this wretched life? Was he spared to eke out an accursed existence? Could there be any truth in the old story of Cain? He remembered it as one of the sacred teachings which had been instilled into his infantile mind with all the accompaniments of rod and task-room and unbending severity, and which he had since scouted, in common with other like stories, as a mere childish legend. “A wanderer on the face of the earth.” Ah, but then his sentence had begun before he had earned it. The curse of Cain had been upon him before he had committed Cain’s crime. And why had the temptation and opportunity been so thrust upon him? He had gone out that fatal night perfectly devoid of harmful intent—not so much as a thought of it, indeed, had entered his head. He had returned a murderer.

Then a horrid thought came over him. What if the purpose for which he had been brought to this spot was not, after all, accomplished? What might not the terrible sea yield up? That face with its look of awful despair, upon which he had so pitilessly gazed in the wan moonlight, as it sank into the black abyss—how could he bear its unearthly look now, should it suddenly appear before him with glassy, upbraiding eyes, and features hideous from the effects of its long immersion? Even as this thought struck him he descried something floating in the water—something long and dark, like a human form. Great God—it was terrible! A cold perspiration broke out all over him as, with a dilated stare, he watched the awful object. What could it be, swaying helplessly backwards and forwards on the ebbing surge? Then it disappeared.

The midnight gloom deepened, and the chill breaths of the mist-laden blast swept through the great fissure, playing about his face like the cold touch of shadowy, spectral hands. Every sound was re-echoed with a hollow clang from the chasm’s overhanging walls, and in the noise of falling water as it ran in torrents from the rocks with each receding swell, and in the many-tongued raving of the imprisoned surges, he seemed to hear the voice of a brother’s blood crying from the deep, and to feel the flap of demon wings in his ears. Had he been alone in this ghastly solitude his very reason might have given way.

But now a blessed ray of light and hope beamed in upon the outer darkness. If he had destroyed life, had he not also saved it? This horrible abyss which had been the scene of his crime had also witnessed his act of reparation—or what might well stand as such—for now he could not help realising that had he not appeared on the beach when he did, his companion would never have retraced her steps in time—even apart from the delay of which he had been the cause. And she would have perished miserably, for her own unaided exertions would never have availed her to reach this place of refuge, or to take advantage of it when there, had she reached it.

The soft, regular breathing of the sleeping girl betokened that her slumbers were peaceful. Her head rested on his shoulder as she reclined against him, a beautiful picture of the most perfect dependence and trust. This pure, sweet, innocent life which he had saved should be his own ark of refuge now. Passionately he kissed the slightly-parted lips.

“My beautiful—my pure guardian angel! I can defy all the demons of the nethermost shades while you are with me!”

She stirred in her sleep and murmured slightly. Then her hands tightened yet more clingingly upon his, and nestling closer to him she slumbered again. No supernatural terrors could appal him now, no fearful imaginings begotten of cold and darkness. Morbid temperament and crime-laden conscience counted for naught as he sat there in the heart of the wild cliffs at midnight, and the pure, lovely life of her who slumbered so peacefully and confidingly in his arms, was dependent on him for its preservation. Whatever grisly secret those grim waters held, they might keep or divulge; it was powerless to scare him while her presence was with him. And so the dark hours wore on, one by one, over the sleeper and over the watcher.

“This way, sir, and mind ’ow you walk. Better let me go fust—if you’ll wait ’ere!” said a rough seafaring voice, and then, in a lower tone, as if addressing another person, it went on, “Better keep him ’ere, sir. If we do find the poor young lady in ’ere—well you know, sir, there ain’t a ghost of a chance of her being alive.”

Lights began to flash in the chasm, feeble and glimmering in contrast with the gigantic ruggedness of its massive walls. Then Roland Dorrien started as if he had been shot. Their time of emancipation had come. She was about to be taken from him, and he must wander forth again. Rapidly he resumed his tinted glasses, which in the uncertain light would suffice to guard against recognition.

“This way?” he called out in a harsh, quavering voice which needed no disguise. “The young lady is perfectly safe, and you will find her here.”

Twice that night did these stern cliffs echo a great cry. First, the awful outpouring of a human soul in its last depths of anguish, now a shout of unparalleled joy and thankfulness. The searching party rushed in the direction of the sound, stumbling and nearly falling in their eagerness.

“Here we are. Now, careful,” cried Roland. And Olive’s half-fainting form was lowered from the ledge which had proved such an ark in the time of need, and placed in her father’s arms. The rough fishermen turned away their heads, and honest Jem Pollock’s manful attempts to clear his throat resulted in a series of dismal barks, which echoed hideously from the overhanging heights.

“Well, I’m darned!” he said, looking up at the ledge. “Who’d ha’ thought such a blessed bit o’ good luck? Well, I’m darned—ahum!—beg pardon, Muster Turner,” he interjected apologetically, becoming aware of the young curate’s presence, right at his elbow.

The first joy of success over, they began to eye the stranger with some curiosity. He stepped forward.

“I fancy the young lady will soon come round,” he said in his assumed voice, which grated with an anxious harshness upon the ears of the listeners. “She has been rather frightened, I fear, and is very wet. The sooner you get her between warm blankets the better.”

“You have earned for yourself the gratitude and blessing not only of a father but of an entire community, sir,” said Turner, extending his hand to him.

“Indeed! How?”

“Why, by saving this young lady’s life,” went on Turner in surprise. “Anyone can see with half an eye that she could never have reached that place of refuge but for you.”

The other smiled sadly.

“I fancy the young lady saved both our lives, since it was she who suggested falling back on this place at all,” he replied. “There was no other chance for us, and so I acted on the idea—happily, as it transpired. And now, if I might suggest—she should be taken home as soon as possible.”

Leaving reluctantly his recovered child, Dr Ingelow hurried up.

“God bless you, sir, whoever you may be!” he cried, seizing both the strangers hands. “Pray do me the favour of making my house your resting-place—you must be wet through and thoroughly tired out—and of allowing me to become further acquainted with one who has rescued my darling child from a terrible death.”