VI.

straight, clean cuts appeared, one across the palm and one across the inside of the fingers just below the knuckles. I looked again towards the bed, and, in the place where my hand had rested during my faint, a small patch of red blood was to be seen. Then it was true! Then it had

WHEN I again became conscious, I found myself half kneeling, half lying across the bed, my arms stretched out in front of me, my face buried in the clothes. Body and mind were alike numbed. A smarting pain in my left hand, a dreadful terror in my heart, were at first the only sensations of all happened! With a low, shudderwhich I was aware. Slowly, very ing sob I threw myself down upon slowly, sense and memory returned to the couch at the foot of the bed, and me, and with them a more vivid inten- lay there for some minutes, my sity of mental anguish, as detail by limbs trembling, and my soul shrinking detail I recalled the weird horror of the within me. A mist of evil, fearful night. Had it really happened, was and loathsome, had descended upon the thing still there, or was it all a my girlhood's life, sullying its ignoraut ghastly nightmare? It was some min- innocence, saddening its brightness, as utes before I dared either to move or I felt, forever. I lay there till my look up, and then fearfully I raised my teeth began to chatter, and I realized head. Before me stretched the smooth that I was bitterly cold. To return to white coverlet, faintly bright with yel- that accursed bed was impossible, so I low sunshine. Weak and giddy, I pulled a rug which hung at one end struggled to my feet, and, steadying of the sofa over me, and, utterly worn myself against the foot of the bed, without in mind and body, fell uneasily clenched teeth and bursting heart, forced my gaze round to the other end. The pillow lay there, bare and unmarked save for what might well have been the pressure of my own head. My breath came more freely, and I turned to the window. The sun had just risen, the golden tree-tops were touched with light, faint threads of mist hung here and there across the sky, and the twittering of birds sounded clearly through the the crisp

autumn air.

It was nothing but a bad dream then, after all, this horror which still hung round me, leaving me incapable of effort, almost of thought. I remembered the cabinet, and looked swiftly in that direction. There it stood, closed as usual, closed as it had been the evening before, as it had been for the last three hundred years, except in my dreams.

asleep.

I was roused by the entrance of my maid. I stopped her exclamations and questions by shortly stating that I had had a bad night, had been unable to rest in bed, and had had an accident with my hand, without further specifying of what description.

"I didn't know that you had been feeling unwell when you went to bed last night, miss," she said.

"When I went to bed last night? Unwell? What do you mean ?"

"Only Mr. Alan has just asked me to let him know how you find yourself this morning," she answered.

Then he expected something, dreaded something. Ah! why had he yielded and allowed me to sleep here, I asked myself bitterly, as the incidents of the day before flashed through my mind.

I

"Tell him," I said, "what I have told you; and say that I wish to speak to him directly after breakfast." could not confide my story to any one else, but speak of it I must to some one or go mad.

Yes, that was it; nothing but a dream, a gruesome, haunting dream. With an instinct of wiping out the dreadful memory, I raised my hand wearily to my forehead. As I did so, I became conscious again of how it hurt me. I looked at it. It was cov-maid's surprise I said that I would ered with half-dried blood, and two dress in her room - the little one

Every moment passed in that place was an added misery. Much to my

which, as I have said, was close to my own. I felt better there; but my utter fatigue and my wounded hand combined to make my toilet slow, and I found that most of the party had finished breakfast when I reached the dining-room. I was glad of this, for even as it was I found it difficult enough to give coherent answers to the questions which my white face and bandaged hand called forth. Alan helped me by giving a resolute turn to the conversation. Once only our eyes met across the table. He looked as haggard and worn as I did; I learned afterwards that he had passed most of that fearful night pacing the passage outside my door, though he listened in vain for any indication of what was going on within the room.

"I told you the truth," he replied, "when I said that I did not know; but I can tell you the popular tradition on the subject, if you like. They say that Margaret Mervyn, the woman who murdered her husband, is buried there, and that Dame Alice had the rock placed over her grave, whether to save it from insult or to mark it out for opprobrium, I never heard. The poor people about here do not care to go near the place after dark, and among the older ones there are still some, I believe, who spit at the suicide's grave as they pass."

"Poor woman, poor woman ! " I exclaimed, in a burst of uncontrollable compassion.

"Why should you pity her?" demanded he with sudden sternness ; The moment I had finished break-"she was a suicide and a murderess fast he was by my side. "You wish too. It would be better for the public to speak to me? now?" he asked, in a conscience, I believe, if such were still low tone. hung in chains, or buried at the cross" I answered breath-roads with a stake through their

"Yes; now, lessly, and without raising my eyes bodies." from the ground.

"Where shall we go? Outside? It is a bright day, and we shall be freer there from interruption."

I assented; and then looking up at him appealingly, "Will you fetch my things for me? I cannot go up to that room again.'

He seemed to understand me, nodded, and was gone. A few minutes later we left the house, and made our way in silence towards a grassy spot on the side of the ravine, where we had already indulged in more than one friendly talk.

As we went, the Dead Stone came for a moment in view. I seized Alan's arm in an almost convulsive grip. "Tell me," I whispered,- "you refused to tell me yesterday, but you must now,-who is buried beneath that rock?"

“Hush, Alan, hush!" I cried hysterically, as I clung to him; "don't speak harshly of her; you do not know, you cannot tell, how terribly she was tempted. How can you ?"

He looked down at me in bewildered surprise. "How can I?” he repeated. "You speak as if you could. What do you mean?"

"Don't ask me," I answered, turning towards him my face, — white, quivering, tear-stained. "Don't ask me. Not now. You must answer my questions first, and after that I will tell you. But I cannot talk of it now. Not yet."

We had reached the place we were in search of as I spoke. There, where the spreading roots of a great beechtree formed a natural resting-place upon the steep side of the ravine, I took my seat, and Alan stretched himself upon the grass beside me. Then looking up at me: "I do not know what questions you would ask," he said quietly; "but I will answer them, whatever they may be."

But I did not ask them yet. I sat instead with my hands clasping my

knee, looking opposite at the glory of suffering that is near to us to grapple

harmonious color, or down the glen at the vista of far-off, dreamlike loveliness, on which it opened out. The yellow autumn sunshine made everything golden, the fresh autumn breezes filled the air with life; but to me a loathsome shadow seemed to rest upon all, and to stretch itself out far beyond where my eyes could reach, befouling the beauty of the whole wide world. At last I spoke. "You have known of it all, I suppose; of this curse that is in the world, - sin and suffering, and what such words mean."

with. For the rest, for this blackness of evil which surrounds us, and which we can do nothing to lighten, it will soon, thank God, become vague and far off to you as it is to others; your feeling of it will be dulled, and, except at moments, you too will forget."

"But that is horrible," I exclaimed passionately; "the evil will be there all the same, whether I feel it or not. Men and women will be struggling in their misery and sin, only I shall be too selfish to care."

66

"We cannot go outside the limits of our own nature," he replied; our knowledge is shallow and our spiritual insight dark, and God in his mercy has made our hearts shallow too, and our imagination dull. If, knowing and trusting only as men do, we were to feel as angels feel, earth would be hell indeed."

"But have you known them as they are known to some,―agonized, hopeless suffering, and sin that is all but inevitable? Some time in your life probably you have realized that such things are; it has come home to you, and to every one else, no doubt, except It was cold comfort, but at that moa few ignorant girls such as I was yes- ment anything warmer or brighter terday. But there are some, yes, would have been unreal and utterly thousands and thousands, who even repellent to me. I hardly took in the now, at this moment, are feeling sorrow like that, are sinking deep, deeper into the bottomless pit of their soul's degradation. And yet men who know this, who have seen it, laugh, talk, are happy, amuse themselves - how can they, how can they?" I stopped with a catch in my voice, and then stretching out my arms in front of me "And it is not only men. Look how beautiful the earth is, and God has made it, and lets the sun crown it every day with a new glory, while this horror of evil broods over and poisons it all. Oh, why is it so? I cannot understand

it."

meaning of his words; but it was as if a hand had been stretched out to me, struggling in the deep mire, by one who himself felt solid ground beneath him. Where he stood I also might some day stand, and that thought seemed to make patience possible.

I

It was he who first broke the silence which followed. "You were saying that you had questions to ask me. am impatient to put mine in return, so please go on."

It had been a relief to me to turn even to generalizations of despair from the actual horror which had inspired them, and to which my mind was thus recalled.

With an effort I replied, "Yes, I want to ask you about that room -the room in which I slept, and

-and the murder which was committed there." In spite of all that I could do, my voice sank almost to a whisper as I concluded, and I was trembling from head to foot.

My arms drooped again as I finished, and my eyes sought Alan's. His were full of tears, but there was almost a smile quivering at the corner of his lips as he replied: "When you have found an answer to that question, Evie, come and tell me and mankind at large; it will be news to us all." Then he continued, "But, after all, the "Who told you that a murder was earth is beautiful, and the sun docs committed there ?" Something in my shine; we have our own happiness to face as he asked the question made rejoice in, our own sorrows to bear, the him add quickly, "Never mind. You

are right. That is the room in which enough and full of incident. On the Hugh Merwyn was murdered by his morning after the murder, so runs the wife. I was surprised at your ques- tale, Dame Alice came down to the tion, for I did not know that any one Grange from the tower to which she but my brothers and myself were aware had retired when her son's wickedof the fact. The subject is never men- nesses had driven her from his house, tioned; it is closely connected with and there in the presence of the two one intensely painful to our family; corpses she foretold the curse which and besides, if spoken of, there would should rest upon their descendants for be inconveniences arising from the generations to come. A clergyman superstitious terrors of servants, and who was present, horrified, it is said, the natural dislike of guests to sleep in at her words, adjured her by the mercy a room where such a thing had hap- of Heaven to place some term to the pened. Indeed it was largely with the doom which she had pronounced. She view of wiping out the last memory of replied that no mortal might reckon the crime's locality, that my father the fruit of a plant which drew its life renewed the interior of the room some from hell; that a term there should be, twenty years ago. The only tradition but as it passed the wisdom of man to which has been adhered to in connec-fix it, so it should pass the wit of man tion with it is the one which has now to discover it. She then placed in the been violated in your person the one room this cabinet, constructed by herwhich precludes any unmarried woman self and her Italian follower, and said from sleeping there. Except for that, that the curse should not depart from the room has, as you know, lost all the family until the day when its doors sinister reputation, and its title of were unlocked and its legend read. 'haunted' has become purely conventional. Nevertheless, as I said, you are right that is undoubtedly the room in which the murder was committed."

He stopped and looked up at me, waiting for more.

"Go on; tell me about it, and what followed." My lips formed the words; my heart beat too faintly for my breath to utter them.

"Such is the story. I tell it to you as it was told to me. One thing only is certain, that the doom thus traditionally foretold has been only too amply fulfilled."

"And what was the doom ?"

Alan hesitated a little, and when he spoke his voice was almost awful in its passionless sternness, in its despairing finality; it seemed to echo the irrevocable judgment which his words pro"About the murder itself there is nounced: "That the crimes against not much to tell. The man, I believe, God and each other which had dewas an inhuman scoundrel, and the stroyed the parents' life should enter woman first killed him in desperation, into the children's blood, and that and afterwards herself in despair.never thereafter should there fail a The only detail connected with the Mervyn to bring shame or death upon actual crime of which I have ever one generation of his father's house.” heard, was the gale that was blowing that night- the fiercest known to this countryside in that generation; and it has always been said since that any misfortune to the Mervyns-especially any misfortune connected with the comes with a storm of wind. That was why I so disliked your story of the imaginary tempests which have disturbed your nights since you slept there. As to what followed," he gave a sigh, "that story is long

curse

"There were two sons of that illfated marriage," he went on, after a pause, "boys at the time of their parents' death. When they grew up they both fell in love with the same woman, and one killed the other in a duel. The story of the next generation was a peculiarly sad one. Two brothers took opposite sides during the civil troubles; but so fearful were they of the curse which lay upon the family, that they chiefly made use of their mutual posi

"Never yet? But surely in our own

66

tion in order to protect and guard |plished by that same brother's aceach other. After the wars were over, tive though unsuspecting assistance. the younger brother, while travelling Generation after generation, men or upon some parliamentary commission, women, guilty or innocent, through the stopped a night at the Grange. There, action of their own will, or in spite of through a mistake, he exchanged the it, the curse has never yet failed of its report which he was bringing to Lon-victims." don for a packet of papers implicating his brother and several besides in a time—your father?" I did not dare royalist plot. He only discovered his to put the question which was burning error as he handed the papers to his my lips. superior, and was but just able to warn "Have you never heard of the tragic his brother in time for him to save his end of my poor young uncles?" he life by flight. The other men involved replied. They were several years were taken and executed, and as it was older than my father. When boys of known by what means information had fourteen and fifteen they were sent out reached the government, the elder with the keeper for their first shooting Mervyn was universally charged with lesson, and the elder shot his brother the vilest treachery. It is said that through the heart. He himself was when after the Restoration his return delicate, and they say that he never home was rumored, the neighboring entirely recovered the shock. He died gentry assembled, armed with riding- before he was twenty, and my father, whips, to flog him out of the county then a child of seven years old, became if he should dare to show his face the heir. It was partly, no doubt, there. He died abroad, shame-stricken owing to this calamity having thus ocand broken-hearted. It was his son, curred before he was old enough to feel brought up by his uncle in the sternest it, that his comparative scepticism on tenets of Puritanism, who, coming the whole subject was due. To that I home after a lengthened journey, found suppose, and to the fact that he grew that during his absence his sister had up in an age of railways and liberal been shamefully seduced. He turned culture." her out of doors, then and there, in the midst of a bitter January night, and the next morning her dead body and that of her new-born infant were found half buried in the fresh-fallen snow on the top of the wolds. The white lady' is still supposed by the villagers to haunt that side of the glen. And so it went on. A beautiful, heartless Mervyn in Queen Anne's time enticed away the affections of her sister's betrothed, and on the day of her own wedding with him, her forsaken sister was found drowned by her own act in the pond at the bottom of the garden. Two brothers were soldiers together in some Continental war, and one was involuntarily the means of discovering and exposing the treason of the other. His voice trembled and broke, and A girl was betrayed into a false mar- for the first time that day I almost forriage, and her life ruined by a man who got the mysterious horror of the night came into the house as her brother's before, in my pity for the actual, tanfriend, and whose infamous designs gible suffering before me. I stretched were forwarded and finally accom-out my hand to his, and his fingers

6

"He didn't believe, then, in the curse ?"

"Well, rather, he thought nothing about it. Until, that is, the time came when it took effect, to break his heart and end his life."

"How do you mean ?"

Alan

There was silence for a little. had turned away his head, so that I could not see his face. Then:

"I suppose you have never been told the true story of why Jack left the country ?"

"No. Was he is he "He is one victim of the curse in this generation, and I, God help me, am the other, and perhaps more wretched one."