CHAPTER XXVII.

IN THE VAULTS.

Time had again gone on. It was autumn weather. Mr. George North was

making a tolerably long sojourn in the place, and seemed to be passing

his days agreeably. Sketching, boating, gossiping; one would have said

he had no earthly care. Perhaps he had not--save the one sweet care of

making himself acceptable to Ethel Reene.

The fate of each was over and done with long ago, so far as that grand

master-passion of the heart went--love. Ethel was helplessly in love

with him for all time. "Ma caprice est faite," she might have said to

Madame Guise in that lady's native language; and Madame would have

opened her eyes to hear it. For in regard to the affection that had

sprung up between those two young people, Madame was entirely in the

dark. Not very observant by nature, her whole thoughts occupied with

the one great trouble of her life, she remained wholly unsuspicious of

what was passing in the inner life of those around her.

George North's love for Ethel made his very existence. The purest,

truest affection man can feel, beat in his heart for Ethel Reene. To

meet, was with both of them the one great event of the day; the hope

to be looked forward to when they rose in the morning, the remembrance

that glowed within their breasts at night. On the solitary cliffs up

by the coastguard station: or down on the sheltered beach of the

seashore, towards the Limpets; or amid the lovely scenery where he

carried his pencils--in one place or another they were sure to meet.

The soft wind seemed to whisper love-songs, the varying tints of the

autumn foliage were as the brilliant colours of the trees on the

everlasting shores, the very air was fraught with a heavenly perfume;

and the world for each was as the Garden of Eden.

Mrs. Castlemaine was no more wise than Madame. She had discerned

nothing. Perhaps their first intimacy grew during a few days that she

was absent from home. Disappointed of the promised excursion to

Paris--for Mr. Castlemaine had allowed the months to go on and on, and

did not attempt to enter on it--Mrs. Castlemaine set off on a ten days'

visit to some friends in the adjoining county, taking Flora with her.

This was close upon the appearance of George North at Greylands.

Ethel, left at home under the chaperonage of Madame, saw a good deal

of Mr. George North: and the mutual liking, already rising in either

heart, perfected itself into love. Long before Mrs. Castlemaine's ten

days of absence had come to an end, they were secretly conscious that

they were all in all to each other.

Mrs. Castlemaine returned, and neither saw nor suspected anything.

Perhaps she was not likely to suspect. People don't go about betraying

the most secretive passion man can feel, or write the words, I love,

in brazen letters on their foreheads. True love is essentially

reticent, hiding itself away from the eye of man within the remotest

folds of the shrinking heart. Neither had Mr. North breathed a word to

Ethel. He was not prepared to do it. Before he could speak, he must be

able to declare his own true name to her and to her step-parents, to

say "I am George Castlemaine." And circumstances would not let him do

that yet.

He had learned absolutely nothing in regard to his brother's fate: to

unravel aught of the mystery attending it seemed to be beyond his

power. He had explored, as he believed, every nook and portion of the

Friar's Keep; but without success of any kind. It appeared to be a

lonely, deserted, and in places a dilapidated building, affording no

spots for concealment. There existed not a trace of Anthony; there was

nothing to show that he had ever entered it. George North stayed on at

the Dolphin, waiting patiently for the elucidation that might or might

not come; listening, whenever they met, to his sister-in-law's most

persistent belief that it would come: and perfectly contented so to

stay on while he could see Ethel and feed his heart's love for her,

though the stay had been for ever.

Midnight was striking from the old turret-clock of the Grey Nunnery.

Standing at the open window of her bedchamber, was Miss Castlemaine.

She had put off the mourning for her father now, and assumed the grey

dress of the Sisterhood. A warm black shawl was wrapped about her

shoulders, for the night air was somewhat cold, and the breeze from

the sea brought a chillness with it. It was late for any of the Grey

Sisters to be up; unless detained by sickness, they went to rest

early: but Miss Castlemaine had come in rather late from spending the

evening at Greylands' Rest, and had afterwards sat up writing a long

letter. She had now been in her room some little time, and had not yet

begun to undress. To use an old saying, she had no sleep in her eyes.

Putting the warm shawl on, she opened the window, and stood leaning on

its sill, deep in thought as she gazed out at the wide expanse of the

sea. Hardly a night had passed of the past summer but she had thus

stood as she was standing now. To look thus over the still sea in its

calmness during this silent hour, or at its heaving waves, flashing

white under the moon or starlight, and lost in thought and care, was a

positive luxury to Miss Castlemaine. But these autumn nights were

getting somewhat cold for it.

It was not her own proper chamber that she was in, but Sister

Mildred's. Sister Mildred was away. Her health was much better; but

Mr. Parker, the doctor, had said most positively that a change of a

month or two was necessary to complete her cure: and Sister Mildred

departed to stay with some relatives whom she had not seen for many

years. She would be returning shortly now, and Mary Ursula's occupancy

of her room was only temporary. The approach of cold weather had

caused some necessary alterations in Mary Ursula's chamber--the old

grate was being replaced by a new one, and the chimney repaired: and

during its process, she occupied the chamber of Sister Mildred.

The lapse of months had not diminished the uneasiness of Mary Ursula's

mind, in regard to the disappearance of her unfortunate cousin Anthony

in the Friar's Keep. That Keep still wore for her an atmosphere of

uncertainty and mystery. She never thought of it--and it was more

often in her thoughts than she would have liked to say--but with one

of those unpleasant thrills of renewed pain that arise at times with

us all, when some heavy sorrow or suspense lies latent in the heart.

Over and over again, since the night when Sister Mildred had

discovered to her the secret passage, and she had explored with that

lady its subterranean depth and length, had the wish--nay, the

resolve--made itself heard within her to go again through the same

passage, and look a little about the Friar's Keep. She knew not how,

she knew not why, but the fear that Anthony had been treacherously

dealt with grew of stronger conviction day by day. Not by Mr.

Castlemaine: she could never fear that: and she resented the doubt

cast upon him by the world--which he in his haughty pride would not

condescend to resent--and believed that the discovery of the truth, if

it could be made, would be doing her uncle the best of services. By

exploring, herself, the Friar's Keep, she might be able to trace out

nothing: but at least the strong desire to try lay upon her. Is it not

so with all of us? In any search or complexity, do we not always

mistrust others, and the capability of others, and think in our secret

hearts that we could succeed where they fail? The figure Mary had seen

with her own eyes, bearing its lamp, and which was religiously

believed by the small community of Greylands to be the ghost of the

wicked monk, long dead and gone, possessed no supernatural terrors for

her. That it was some living personage, personating the dead monk for

a purpose, she felt sure of; and she could not help fancying that in

some unimaginable manner it must have to do with the concealment of

the fate of Anthony.

Circumstances had brought all these matters more especially to her

mind to-night. An old friend of hers, a Mrs. Hunter of Stilborough,

had been also a visitor, though a chance one, that evening at

Greylands' Rest. Mrs. Hunter was very fond of Mr. Castlemaine. She

scouted the doubt thrown upon him in connection with his vanished

nephew, regarding it as the height of absurdity; and to show this

opinion of hers, rather liked talking of the affair. She had

introduced it that evening at Greylands' Rest, asking all sorts of

questions about the Keep, and about the ghost that sometimes appeared

there, and about Anthony. During this conversation, Mary Ursula

noticed that her uncle was remarkably silent; and once she caught a

look of strangely painful uneasiness on his face. As they were walking

home--for it was Mr. Castlemaine himself who had brought her back to

the Grey Nunnery--she ventured to speak of it to him.

"You have never heard in any way of Anthony, I suppose, Uncle James?"

"Never," was Mr. Castlemaine's reply.

"Is it not strange that some of his friends in France do not inquire

after him? He must have had friends there."

"I'm sure I don't know," was the curt answer.

"What do you think became of him, uncle?"

"My dear, the affair has altogether so annoyed me that I don't care to

think. We will drop it, Mary Ursula."

Now, this was not satisfactory--and Mary felt that it was not. Of

course it closed her lips upon the subject of Anthony; but she put

another question not much less hazardous.

"Who is that figure that shows himself sometimes as the ghost of the

Grey Monk?"

"I do not understand you."

The answer caused her to pause: the tone of it was, certainly

resentful.

"He walks about with his lamp, uncle."

"Well?"

"Surely you do not believe in it--that it is really a ghost?" she

exclaimed in astonishment.

"I am content not to be wiser than my neighbours," replied Mr.

Castlemaine. "I suppose I have some elements of superstition within

me. We are none of us responsible for our own nature, you know, Mary

Ursula."

She said no more. In fact, they reached the Nunnery gate just then.

Mr. Castlemaine saw her indoors, and went back again. Mary sat late,

writing her letter, and then came up to her room.

She was thinking over it all now, as she stood at the window, the

fresh sea air blowing upon her somewhat heated brow. There was no

moon, but the night was passably light. Gentle waves stirred the

surface of the water; a faint ripple might be heard from the incoming

tide. It had turned some three hours since, and now covered, as Mary

knew, the narrow path underneath the Nunnery, but not the strip of

beach at the Friar's Keep: that beach, however, would be inaccessible

for some hours, except by sea. Some night boats were out beyond

Greylands, fishing as usual: she could discover their lights in the

distance. Almost immediately opposite to her, and not far off, stood a

two-masted vessel at anchor. She wondered why it should have stayed in

that solitary spot, so close in-shore, instead of the more customary

place off the beach. It may be almost said that she saw and thought

these things unconsciously in her mind's preoccupation.

Nothing surprised her more--nay, half as much--as Mr. Castlemaine's

implied admission of his belief in the supernatural appearance of the

Grey Friar. An impression was abroad among the fishermen that the

Castlemaines believed in the ghost as fully as they themselves did:

but until to-night Mary had smiled at this. Look on what side she

would, it seemed to be mystery upon mystery.

More food, than this subject, and quite as unpleasant, though of a

different nature, had been given to Mary that night by Mrs. Hunter.

One of Mary's chief friends in Stilborough had been a Mrs. Ord; she

and Mary had been girls together. The husband, Colonel Ord, was in

India: the young wife, who was delicate, remained at home. Sad news

had now arrived from India. Colonel Ord was dead. He had died

suddenly; it was supposed in consequence of excitement at the failure

of an Indian Bank, in which all his property was placed. Mrs. Hunter

had imparted this news at Greylands' Rest: and she had moreover

whispered an announcement that had just been made public--the

engagement of William Blake-Gordon to the heiress of Mountsorrel.

Little marvel that Mary's eyes had no sleep in them!

Her reflections--and they were very painful--were interrupted by some

stir that appeared to be taking place on board the two-masted vessel.

Suddenly, as it seemed to her, two boats shot out from it, one after

the other. The men, rowing them, seemed to be steering right for this

end of the Nunnery; and Mary watched with surprise. No: they were

making, it was quite evident now, for the Friar's Keep higher up.

Stretching out at the casement window as far as she dared stretch,

Mary saw them go straight on for the little beach there; she thought

she heard a bustle; she fancied she distinguished whispers. Wild

ideas, devoid of reason, arose within her: in the broad matter-of-fact

daylight, she might have felt ashamed of their improbability; but the

imagination, when excited, soars away on curious wings. Were these

boats bringing back Anthony?

The night went on. She saw other boats come: she saw boats go back;

she saw them come again. Surely she was not dreaming all this! and yet

it seemed an impossible pageantry. At length a powerful impulse took

possession of her--she would go through the secret passage and try and

solve the mystery: go then and there.

Fastening her warm black shawl more securely round her, and tying on a

dark silk hood, she unlocked her drawers to get the keys of the

passage, and descended softly the stairs. In descending them it had

not seemed very lonely--though a sense of loneliness does strike upon

one when making a solitary pilgrimage about even an inhabited house at

the dead of night, when everybody else is abed and asleep. But when

she came to go down the stone steps to the damp vaults below, lighted

only by the solitary lantern she held, then Mary's courage deserted

her. Brave and good woman though she was, she halted in a kind of

terror, and asked herself whether she could go on alone. Alone she

must go if she went at all: not for a great deal would she disclose

the fact of this existing passage to any of the Sisters, or let them

know of her errand in it. Sister Mildred was the only one who shared

the secret, and Sister Mildred was not there.

Taking a few minutes to recover herself; to strive, ay, and to pray

for returning courage; Mary at length went on. Arrived at the door,

she unlocked it with great trouble: the lock was no less rusty than

before, and now there was only one pair of hands to it; and she went

swiftly along the passage in a sort of desperate perseverance. The

door at the other end unlocked, but with just as much difficulty, she

once more, for the second time in her life, found herself in the

cloistered vaults underneath the Keep.

Pausing again to gather what bravery would come to her, her hand

pressed on her beating heart, she then proceeded about the place with

her lantern; throwing its light here, throwing it there. At first she

could see no trace of anyone, living or dead; could hear no sound.

Soon she halted abruptly; a thought had come across her, bringing a

sick fear--suppose she should not be able to find her way back to the

passage door, but must remain where she was until daylight? Daylight!

what light of day could penetrate those unearthly vaults?--they must

be always, by day and by night, as dark as the grave. As she stood

undecided whether to search further or to go back at once, she became

conscious of a whiff of fresh air, that brought with it a smell of the

sea.

Stepping gently in its direction, she found herself at an opening. A

door, it seemed: whatever it was, it was open to the strip of beach

under the Friar's Keep, and to the sea beyond it. All seemed perfectly

still: there was neither sight nor sound of human being; but as she

stood in the stillness she caught the distant regular dip of the oars

in the water, belonging no doubt to the retreating boats.

What could it mean?--what could it all be? Even this opening, in the

hitherto-supposed-to-be impregnable walls--was it a new opening, or

did it exist always? Mary stood wondering, listening, looking; or,

rather, peering: peering into the darkness of the night, for it was

not light enough to look.

These vaults, how much farther did they extend? She could not

conjecture, and dared not attempt to discover, lest she lost her way

back again: all the interstices of these pillared cloisters seemed one

so like another that she might not risk it. Turning away from the

fresh breeze and the welcome smell of the sea, she began to retrace

her steps.

To retrace her steps, as she imagined, her thoughts very full. The

question had been mooted, by people unacquainted with the place--were

there any means by which the unfortunate Anthony Castlemaine could be

effectually disposed of, if the worst had happened to him: say, any

facility for throwing him into the sea? The answer had always been No,

not from the Friar's Keep, for the Keep had no communication of any

kind with the sea, its walls were thick and impervious. But, it seemed

that there was a communication with the sea--as Mary had now just

seen. Her thoughts and her breath alike came unpleasantly quick, and

she groped along, and laid her disengaged hand on her bosom to still

its pain.

But where was the door? Where? She thought she had been going in its

direction, but she had come far enough, and to spare, and here was no

sign of it. Was she indeed lost in this ghostly place? Her heart beat

ten times more wildly at the thought.

She was very cautious in the use of the lantern, lest it might betray

her, should anyone chance to be there: carrying it close before her,

and keeping three of its sides dark. She moved it here, she moved it

there: but no trace of the door did it shine upon; and in her

desperation, she pushed down the three dark slides, and flung the

light aloft. Nothing was to be seen but the dark stone floor of the

vaults, their intersected pillars and arches above, and the openings

between them. One spot, one division, was ever just like another.

Lost! lost!

Her hand fell with the lantern: the drops of fear broke out on her

face. At that moment a sound, as of the banging of a door, echoed

among the pillars, and she hastily hid the glaring lantern under her

shawl.

Other sounds came. Some door had evidently been shut, for now it was

being barred and bolted. It was not very near, and Mary Ursula waited.

Then, turning on the full light of her lantern again, and keeping her

back to the sounds, she went swiftly, blindly about, in search of the

passage door.

Ah, what a blessing! There it was, now, before her. Perhaps in all her

life she had never experienced a moment of relief like that. A sound

of joy faintly escaped her; an aspiration of thankfulness went up from

her heart.

She had brought the keys inside with her, as a precaution, in case the

door should close; they were tied together with string, and she had

lodged the key belonging to this door in the lock on this side: Sister

Mildred had done the same on the occasion of their first expedition.

But now, as she stood there, Mary found she could not easily draw the

key out: it might have got turned in the lock, and the lock was hard

and unmanageable: so she had to put down the lantern, first of all

closing its three sides, and take both hands to the key.

She had just got it out and pushed the door open, and was gliding

softly and swiftly through, when a great bright light was thrown upon

her, and a rough hand grasped her shoulder. With a cry of awful

terror, Mary turned, and saw a pistol held close to her face.

"O don't!" she cried--"spare me! spare me! I am Sister Mary Ursula--I

am Miss Castlemaine."

The man, who looked young, and was short and sturdy, turned in the

doorway, with his dark lantern, never speaking a word. At that unlucky

moment, the door swung against his elbow, and the pistol went off.

Down he dropped with a hoarse scream.

Whether Mary Ursula retained her senses for the instant, she never

afterwards knew. Fear, and the instinct of self-preservation, would

have caused her to fly: but how could she leave the wounded man to his

fate? The whole place seemed to be reeling around her; her head swam,

and she stood back against the wall for support.

"Are you here alone?" she asked, bending down, when she could get her

breath and some little strength into her shrinking spirit.

"I be, ma'am. The rest are all gone."

Why! surely she knew that voice! Taking her lantern, she threw its

light upon his face, and recognized Walter Dance, Dance the

fisherman's son: a young fellow with whom she had had a friendly chat

only yesterday: and to whom she had given many a little present when

he was a lad.

"Is it you, Walter!" she exclaimed, with the utmost astonishment--and

to find that it was he seemed to chase away as by magic her worst

fears. "What were you doing here?"

No answer--except some dismal groans.

"Are you much hurt?"

"I am just killed," he moaned. "Oh, ma'am! who is to help me?"

Who indeed! Mary Ursula had an innate dread of such calamities as

this; she had a true woman's sensitive heart, shrinking terribly from

the very thought of contact with these woes of life. "I do not know

that I can help you, Walter," she said faintly. "Where are you hurt?

Do you think you could get up?"

He began to try, and she helped him to his feet. One arm, the left,

was powerless; and the young man said his left side was also. He

leaned upon her, begging pardon for the liberty, and looked about him

in dismay.

"Where does this here passage lead to, ma'am?"

"To the Grey Nunnery. Could you manage to walk to it?"

"I must get somewhere, lady, where I can be aided. I feel the blood

a-dripping down me. If the bullet is not inside of me, it must have

bedded itself in the wall."

The blood came from the arm. Beginning to feel faint again, feeling

also very much as though she had been the cause of this, perhaps had

cost the young man his life, Mary Ursula bound up the arm as well as

she could, with her hankerchief and with his.

"Will you go on with me to the Nunnery, Walter?"

"Yes, ma'am, an' I can get there. I never knew of this here passage."

She locked the door, took the keys and the two lanterns herself,

giving him the pistol, and bade Walter lean upon her. The walking

seemed to hurt him very much, and he moaned frequently. In spite of

his hardy fisherman's life, he was a very bad one to bear pain. When

they came to the vaults of the Nunnery and, had to ascend the stairs,

his face turned livid, and he clutched Miss Castlemaine tightly to

save himself from falling. The pistol dropped from his hand once.

She got him into a small room off the kitchen, where accidents had

been attended to before--for, indeed, the Grey Nunnery was somewhat of

a hospital, and the good Sisters were its tender nurses. A wide, hard,

capacious sofa was there, and down he sank upon it. Mary stayed to

light a candle, and then hastened away to get help.

"You shall have a little brandy directly, Walter," she said. "I am

going now to call assistance: we must get Mr. Parker here."

He only moaned in answer: the agony in his side seemed dreadful: but

as Miss Castlemaine was leaving the room, he called her back again.

"Lady," he cried with feverish earnestness, and there was a wildly

eager look in his eyes as they sought hers, "don't tell how it was

done; don't tell where you saw me, or aught about it. I shall say my

pistol went off in the chapel ruins, and that I crawled here to your

door to get succour. I've got a reason for it."

"Very well: be it so," assented Miss Castlemaine, after a pause of

reflection. It would be at least as inconvenient for her, were the

truth confessed, as for him.

He looked frightfully pale: and, to Miss Castlemaine's horror, she saw

some drops of blood dripping from his clothes, which must proceed from

the wound in his side. Flying up the stairs, she entered the first

chamber, where Sisters Ann and Phoeby slept; aroused them with a word

or two of explanation, and was back again almost instantly with some

water and the flask of brandy kept for emergencies. The Sisters were

down almost as soon as she was; they were both capable women in a case

such as this, almost as good themselves as a doctor. They saw to his

side and bound it up, just as Mary Ursula had bound his arm. Sister

Ann then ran off for Mr. Parker, and Sister Phoeby went to the kitchen

to light the fire and prepare hot water, leaving Miss Castlemaine

alone with the patient.

CHAPTER XVIII.

OUT TO SHOOT A NIGHT-BIRD.

Walter Dance's situation appeared to be critical. Miss Castlemaine

(entirely unused to accidents) feared it was so, and he himself fully

believed it. He thought that great common conqueror of us all, who is

called the King of Terrors, was upon him, Death, and it brought to him

indeed a terror belonging not to this world.

"I am dying," he moaned; "I am dying." And his frame shook as with an

awful ague, and his teeth chattered, and great beads of water stood on

his livid face. "Lord, pardon me! Oh, ma'am, pray for me."

The young man had been all his life so especially undemonstrative that

his agitation was the more notable now from the very contrast. Mary,

full of fear herself and little less agitated than he, could only

strive to appear calm, as she bent over him and took his hands.

"Nay, Walter, it may not be as serious as you fear; I think it is

not," she gently said. "Mr. Parker will be here presently. Don't

excite yourself, my good lad; don't."

"I am dying," he reiterated; "I shall never get over this. Oh, ma'am,

you ladies be like parsons for goodness: couldn't you say a prayer?"

She knelt down and put up her hands to say a few words of earnest

prayer; just what she thought might best comfort him. One of his hands

lay still, but he stretched the other up, suffering it to touch hers.

These ladies of the Nunnery were looked upon by the fishermen as being

very near to Heaven nearer (let it be said under the breath) than was

Parson Marston.

"I've done a many wicked things, lady," he began when her voice

ceased, apparently saying it in the light of a confession. "I've often

angered father and grandmother beyond bearing: and this night work,

I've never liked it. I suppose it's a wrong thing in God's sight: but

father, he brought me in to't, as 'twere, and what was I to do?"

"What night work?" she asked.

But there came no answer. Mary would not repeat the question. He was

lying in extreme agitation, shaking painfully. She put the

brandy-and-water to his lips.

"I must tell it afore I go," he resumed, as if in response to some

battle with himself. "Ma'am you'll promise me never to repeat it

again?"

"I never will," she replied earnestly, remembering that death-bed

confessions, made under the seal of secrecy, should, of all things, be

held sacred. "If you have aught to confess, Walter, that it may

comfort you to speak, tell it me with every confidence, for I promise

you that it shall never pass my lips."

"It's not for my sake, you see, that it must be kept, but for their

sakes: the Castlemaines."

"The what?" she cried, not catching the words.

"And for father's and the Commodore's, and all the rest of 'em. It

would spoil all, you see, ma'am, for the future--and they'd never

forgive me as I lay in my grave."

She wondered whether he was wandering. "I do not understand you,

Walter."

"It all belongs to Mr. Castlemaine, father thinks, though the

Commodore manages it, and makes believe it's his. Sometimes he comes

down, the master, and sometimes Mr. Harry; but it's Teague and us that

does it all."

"What is it that you are talking of?" she reiterated.

"The smuggling work," he whispered.

"The smuggling work?"

"Yes, the smuggling work. Oh, ma'am, don't ever tell of it! It would

just be the ruin of father and the men, and anger Mr. Castlemaine

beyond bearing."

Her thoughts ran off to Mr. Superintendent Nettleby, and to the poor

fishermen, whom it was that officer's mission to suspect of possessing

drams of unlawful brandy and pouches of contraband tobacco. She

certainly believed the sick brain had lost its balance.

"We've run a cargo to-night," he whispered; "a good one too. The rest

had cleared off, and there was only me left to lock the doors. When I

see the glimmer of your light, ma'am, and somebody moving, I thought

it was one of the men left behind, but when I got up and found it was

a woman's garments, I feared it was a spy of the preventive officers

come to betray us."

"What cargo did you run?" she inquired, putting the one question from

amid her mind's general chaos.

"I fancy 'twas lace. It generally is lace, father thinks. Nothing pays

like that."

Curious ideas were crowding on her, as she remembered the boats

putting backwards and forwards that night from the two-masted vessel,

lying at anchor. Of what strange secret was she being made cognisant?

Could it be that some of the mystery attaching to the Friar's Keep was

about to be thus strangely and most unexpectedly cleared to her?

"Walter, let me understand. Do you mean to say that smuggling is

carried on in connection with the Friar's Keep?"

"Yes, it is. It have been for years. Once a month, or so, there's a

cargo run: sometimes it's oftener. An underground passage leads from

the Keep to the Hutt, and the goods are stowed away in the cellar

there till the Commodore can take 'em away to the receivers in his

spring cart."

"And who knows of all this?" she asked, after a pause. "I mean in

Greylands."

"Only father and me," he faintly said, for he was getting exhausted.

"They've not dared to trust anybody else. That's quite enough to know

it--us. The sailors bring in the goods, and we wheel 'em up the

passage: Teague, and me, and father. I've seen Mr. Harry put his hand

to the barrow afore now. George Hallet--Jane's brother--he knew of it,

and helped too. We had to be trusted with it, him and me, being on

father's boat."

In the midst of her compassion and pity for this young man, a feeling

of resentment at his words arose in Mary's heart. There might be truth

in the tale he told in regard to the smuggling--nay, the manoeuvres of

the boats that night and the unsuspected door she had seen open to the

narrow beach, seemed to confirm it: but that this nefarious work was

countenanced by, or even known to, the Master of Greylands, she

rejected utterly. If there was, in her belief, one man more honourable

than any other on the face of the earth, more proudly conscious of his

own rectitude, it was her Uncle James. Pride had always been his

failing. Walter Dance must be either partially wandering in mind to

say it; or else must have taken up a fallacious fancy: perhaps been

imposed upon by his father from some private motive. The work must be

Teague's, and his only.

"Walter, you are not in a condition to be contradicted," she said

gently, "but I know you are mistaken as to Mr. Castlemaine. He could

not hold any cognisance of such an affair of cheating as this--or his

son either."

"Why, the business is theirs, ma'am; their very own: father don't feel

a doubt of it. The Commodore only manages it for 'em."

"You may have been led to suppose that: but it is not, cannot be true.

My Uncle James is the soul of honour. Can you suppose it likely that a

gentleman like Mr. Castlemaine would lend himself to a long continued

system of fraud?"

"I've always thought 'twas his," groaned Walter. "I've seen him there

standing to look on."

"You must have been mistaken. Did you see him there to-night?"

"No, ma'am."

"Nor any other night, my poor lad, as I will venture to answer for."

"He might have been there to-night, though, without my seeing him,"

returned the young man, who seemed scarcely conscious of her words.

"How should you have left the vaults, but for this accident?" she

asked, the question striking her.

"I had locked the door on the sea, and was going straight up the

passage to the Hutt," he groaned, the pain in his side getting

intolerable.

"One question, Walter, and then I will not trouble you with more," she

breathed, and her voice took a trembling sound as she spoke. "Carry

your thoughts back to that night, last February, when young Mr.

Anthony was said to disappear within the Friar's Keep----"

"I know," he interrupted.

"Was any cargo run that night?"

"I can't tell," he answered, lifting his eyes for a moment to hers. "I

was ill abed with a touch of the ague; I get it sometimes. I don't

think father was abroad that night, either."

"Have you ever known, ever heard any hint, or rumour, from your father

or the Commodore or the sailors who run these cargoes, that could

throw light on Mr. Anthony's fate?"

"Never. Never a word."

"Who are the sailors that come?"

"Mostly foreigners. Is it very sinful?" he added in an access of

agony, more bodily than mental, putting out his one hand to touch

hers. "Very sinful to have helped at this, though father did lead me?

Will God forgive it?"

"Oh yes, yes," she answered. "God is so merciful that He forgives

every sin repented of--sins that are a vast deal blacker than this.

Besides, you have not acted from your own will, it seems, but in

obedience to authority."

"I think I'm dying," he murmured. "I can't bear this pain long."

She wiped the dew from his face, and again held the brandy-and-water

to his lips. Walter Dance had always been in the highest degree

sensitive, it may be said excruciatingly sensitive, to physical pain.

Many another man, lying as he was now with these same injuries, would

not have uttered a moan. Brave Tom Dance, his father, was wont to tell

him that if ever he met with a sharpish hurt he'd turn out a very

woman.

"If Doctor Parker would but come!" he cried restlessly. "Lady, you are

sure he is sent for?"

As if to answer the doubt, the gate-bell rang out, and Mr. Parker's

voice was heard, as he entered the Nunnery. Sister Ann had brought not

only him, but John Bent also. Miss Castlemaine felt vexed and much

surprised to see the latter: some faint idea, or hope, had been lying

within her of keeping this untoward affair secret, at least for a few

hours; and nobody had a longer tongue in a quiet way than the landlord

of the Dolphin. She cast a look of reproach on the Sister.

"It was not my fault, madam," whispered Sister Ann, interpreting the

glance. "Mr. Bent came over with us without as much as asking."

"Bless my heart, Walter Dance, here's a pretty kettle o' fish," began

the surgeon, looking down on the patient. "You have shot yourself,

Sister Ann says. And now, how did that come to happen?"

"Pistol went off unawares," groaned Walter. "I think I'm dying."

"Not just yet, let us hope," said the doctor cheerily, as he began to

take off his coat and turn up his shirt-sleeves.

Sending Miss Castlemaine from the room, the doctor called for Sister

Ann, who had helped him before in attending to accidents, and had as

good a nerve as he. Mary, glad enough to be dismissed, went into the

kitchen to Sister Phoeby, and there indulged in a sudden burst of

tears. The events of the night had strangely unnerved her.

If Sister Ann exercised any speculation as to the cause of the

displeasure visible in the Superior's face at the sight of John Bent,

she set it down solely to the score of possible excitement to the

patient. As she hastened to whisper, it was not her fault. Upon

returning back from fetching Mr. Parker, he and she were bending their

hasty steps across the road from the corner of the inn, when, to the

astonishment of both, the voice of John Bent accosted them, sounding

loud and clear in the silence of the night. Turning their heads, they

saw the landlord standing at his open door.

"Keeping watch to see the sun rise, John?" asked the doctor jestingly.

"I am keeping watch for my lodger," replied the landlord in a

grumbling tone, for he was feeling the want of his bed and, resented

the being kept out of it. "Mr. North went off this afternoon to a

distance with his sketch-book and things, ordering some supper to be

ready at nine o'clock, as he should miss his dinner, and he has never

come back again. It is to be hoped he will come; that we are not to

have a second edition of the disappearance of young Anthony

Castlemaine."

"Pooh!" quoth the doctor. "Mr. North has only lost his way."

"I hope it may prove so!" replied the landlord grimly: for his fears

were at work, though at present they took no definite shape. "What

sickness is calling you abroad at this hour, doctor?"

"Young Walter Dance has shot himself," interposed Sister Ann, who had

been bursting with the strange news, and felt supremely elated at

having somebody to tell it to.

"Walter Dance shot himself!" echoed the landlord, following them, upon

impulse, to hear more. "How?--where? How did he do it?"

"Goodness knows!" returned Sister Ann. "He must have done it

somewhere--and come to the Nunnery somehow. Sister Mary Ursula was

still sitting up, we conclude--which was fortunate, as no time was

lost. When we went to bed after prayers, she remained in the parlour

to write letters."

In the astonishment created by the tidings, John Bent went with them

to the Nunnery, leaving his own open door uncared for--but at that

dead hour of the morning there was little fear of strangers finding it

so. That was the explanation of his appearance. And there they were,

the doctor and Sister Ann, busy with the wounded man, and John Bent

satisfying his curiosity by listening to the few unconnected words of

enlightenment that Walter chose to give as to the cause of the

accident, and by fingering the pistol, which lay on the table.

"Will the injuries prove fatal?" asked Miss Castlemaine of the

surgeon, when the latter at length came forth.

"Dear me, no!" was the reply, as he entered the parlour, at the door

of which she stood. "Don't distress yourself by thinking of such a

thing, my dear young lady. Blood makes a great show, you know; and no

doubt the pain in the side is acute. There's no real cause for fear;

not much damage, in fact: and he feels all reassured, now I have put

him to rights."

"The ball was not in him?"

"Nothing of the kind. The side was torn a little and burnt, and of

course was, for one who feels pain as he does, intolerably painful.

When I tell you that the longest job will be the broken arm, and that

it is the worse of the two, you may judge for yourself how slight it

all is. Slight, of course, in comparison with what might have been,

and with graver injuries."

"Did the ball go through the arm?"

"Only through the flesh. The bone no doubt snapped in falling: the arm

must have got awkwardly doubled wader him somehow. We shall soon have

him well again."

Mary gave vent to a little sob of thankfulness. It would have been an

awful thing for her had his life been sacrificed. She felt somewhat

faint herself, and sat down on the nearest chair.

"This has been too much for you," said the doctor; "you are not used

to such things. And you must have been sitting up very late, my dear

young lady--which is not at all right. Surely you could write your

letters in the day-time!"

"I do things sometimes upon impulse; without reason," she answered

with a faint smile. "Hearing sad news of an old friend of mine from

Mrs. Hunter, whom I met at Greylands' Rest last evening, I sat down to

write to her soon after my return."

"And spun your letter out unconsciously--it is always the case. For my

part, I think there's a fascination in night work. Sit down when the

house is still to pen a few minutes' letter to a friend, and ten to one

but you find yourself still at it at the small hours of the morning.

Well, it was lucky for young Dance that you were up. You heard him at

the door at once, he says, and hastened to him."

A deep blush suffused her face. She could only tacitly uphold the

deceit.

"His is rather a lame tale, though, by the way--what I can understand

of it," resumed Mr. Parker. "However, it did not do to question him

closely, and the lad was no doubt confused besides. We shall come to

the bottom of it to-morrow."

"You are going home?" she asked.

"There's no necessity whatever for me to stay. We have made him

comfortable for the rest of the night with pillows and blankets.

Sister Ann means to sit up with him: not that she need do it.

To-morrow we will move him to his own home."

"Will he be well enough for that?"

"Quite. He might have been carried there now had means been at hand.

And do you go up to your bed at once, and get some rest," concluded

the doctor, as he shook hands and took his departure.

John Bent had already gone home. To his great relief, the first object

he saw was Mr. North, who arrived at the inn door, just as he himself

did. The surgeon's supposition, spoken carelessly though it was proved

to be correct. George North had missed his way in returning; had gone

miles and miles out of the road, and then had to retrace his steps.

"I'm dead beat," he said to the landlord, with a half laugh.

"Fearfully hungry, but too tired to eat. It all comes of my not

knowing the country; and there was nobody up to enquire the way of. By

daylight, I should not have made so stupid a mistake."

"Well, I have been worrying myself with all sorts of fancies, Sir,"

said John. "It seemed just as though you had gone off for good in the

wake of young Mr. Anthony Castlemaine."

"I wish to goodness I had!" was the impulsive, thoughtless rejoinder,

spoken with ringing earnestness.

"Sir!"

Mr. North recollected himself, and did what he could to repair the

slip.

"I should at least have had the pleasure of learning where this Mr.

Anthony Castlemaine had gone--and that would have been a satisfaction

to you all generally," he said carelessly.

"You are making a joke of it, sir," said the landlord, in a tone of

reproach. "With some of us it is a matter all too solemn: I fear it

was so with him. What will you take, sir?"

"A glass of ale--and then I will go up to bed. I am, as I say, too

tired to eat. And I am very sorry indeed, Mr. Bent, to have kept you

up."

"That's nothing, now you've come back in safety," was the hearty

reply. "Besides, I'm not sorry it has happened so, sir, for I've had

an adventure. That young Walter Dance has gone and shot himself

to-night; he is lying at the Grey Nunnery, and I have but now been over

there with Mr. Parker.

"Why, how did he manage to do that?" cried Mr. North, who knew young

Dance very well.

"I hardly know, sir. We couldn't make top or tail of what he said: and

the doctor wouldn't have him bothered. It was something about shooting

a night-bird with a pistol, and he shot himself instead."

"Where?"

"In the chapel ruins."

"In the chapel ruins!" echoed Mr. North--and he had it on the tip of

his tongue to say that Walter Dance would not go to the chapel ruins

at night for untold gold: but the landlord went on and interrupted the

words.

"He seemed to say it was the chapel ruins, sir; but we might have

misunderstood him. Any way, it sounds a bit mysterious. He was in a

fine tremor of pain when the doctor got in, thinking he was dying."

"Poor fellow! It was only yesterday morning I went for a sail with

him. Is he seriously injured?"

"No, sir; the damages turn out to be nothing much, now they are looked

into."

"I am glad of that," said Mr. North; "I like young Dance.

Goodnight to you, landlord. Or, rather, good-morning," he called

back, as he went up the staircase.

Miss Castlemaine also went to her bed. The first thing she did on

reaching her room was to look out for the two-masted vessel. Not a

trace of it remained. It must have heaved its anchor and sailed away

in the silence of the night.

Mr. Parker was over betimes at the Grey Nunnery in the morning. His

patient was going on quite satisfactorily.

Reassured upon the point of there being no danger, and in considerably

less pain than at first, Walter Dance's spirits had gone up in a

proportionate ratio. He said he felt quite well enough to be removed

home--which would be done after breakfast.

"Passato il pericolo, gabbato il santo," says the Italian proverb. We

have ours somewhat to the same effect, beginning "When the devil was

sick"--which being well known to the reader, need not be quoted. Young

Mr. Walter Dance presented an apt illustration of the same. On the

previous night, when he believed himself to be dying, he was ready and

eager to tell every secret pressing on his soul: this morning, finding

he was going to live, his mood had changed, and he could have bitten

out his unfortunate tongue for its folly.

He was well disposed, as young men go, truthful, conscientious. It

would have gone against the grain with him to do an injury to any

living man. He lay dwelling on the injury he might now have done, by

this disclosure, to many people--and they were just those people whom,

of all the world, he would most care to cherish and respect. Well,

there was but one thing to do now, he thought truthful though he was

by nature, he must eat his words, and so try and repair the mischief.

Mary Ursula rose rather late. Walter Dance had had his breakfast when

she got down, and she was told of the doctor's good report. Much

commotion had been excited in the Nunnery when the Grey Ladies heard

what had happened. They had their curiosity, just as other people have

theirs; and Sister Ann gave them the version of the story which she

had gathered. The young man had been up at the chapel ruins to shoot a

night-bird, the pistol had gone off, wounding him in the arm and side,

and he came crawling on all fours to the Grey Nunnery. The superior,

Sister Mary Ursula, sitting up late at her letters, heard him at the

door, helped him in, and called for assistance.

Well, it was a strange affair, the ladies decided; stranger than

anything that had happened at the Grey Nunnery before: but they

trusted he would get over it. And did not all events happen for the

best! To think that it should be just that night, of all others, that

Sister Mary Ursula should have remained below!

Mary Ursula went into the sick-room, and was surprised at the improved

looks of the patient. His face had lost its great anxiety and was

bright again. He looked up at her gratefully, and smiled.

"They are so kind to me, lady!--and I owe it all to you."

Mary Ursula sat down by the couch. Late though it was when she went to

rest, she had been unable to sleep, and had got up with one of the bad

headaches to which she was occasionally subject. The strange

disclosure made to her by Walter Dance, added to other matters, had

troubled her brain and kept her awake. While saying to herself that so

disgraceful an aspersion on the Castlemaines was worse than

unjustifiable, outrageously improbable, some latent fear in her heart

kept suggesting the idea--what if it should be true! With the broad

light of day, she had intended to throw it quite to the winds--but she

found that she could not. The anxiety was tormenting her.

"Walter," she began in a low tone, after cheerily talking a little

with him about his injuries, "I want to speak to you of what you

disclosed to me last night. When I got up this morning I thought in

truth I had dreamt it--that it could not be true."

"Dreamt what?" he asked.

"About the smuggling," she whispered. "And about what you said,

reflecting on my uncle. You are more collected this morning; tell me

what is truth and what is not."

"I must have talked a deal of nonsense last night, ma'am," spoke the

young man after a pause, as he turned his uneasy face to the wall--for

uneasy it was growing. "I'm sure I can't remember it a bit."

She told him what he did say.

"What a fool I must have been! 'Twas the pain, lady, made me fancy it.

Smugglers in the Friar's Keep! Well, that is good!"

"Do you mean to say it is not true?" she cried eagerly.

"Not a word on't, ma'am. I had a fever once, when I was a little

'un--I talked a rare lot o' nonsense then. Enough to set the place

afire, grandmother said."

"And there is no smuggling carried on?--and what you said to implicate

Mr. Castlemaine has no foundation save in your brain?" she reiterated,

half bewildered with this new aspect.

"If I said such outrageous things, my wits must have gone clean out of

me," asserted Walter. "Mr. Castlemaine would be fit to hang me, ma'am,

if it came to his ears."

"But--if there is nothing of the kind carried on, what of the boats

last night?" asked Mary Ursula, collecting her senses a little. "What

were they doing?"

"Boats, lady!" returned Walter, showing the most supreme

unconsciousness. "What boats?"

"Some boats that put off from an anchored vessel, and kept passing to

and fro between it and the Keep."

"If there was boats, they must have come off for some purpose of their

own," asserted the young man, looking as puzzled as you please. "And

what did I do, down where you found me, you ask, ma'am? Well, I did go

there to shoot a bird; that little strip o' beach is the quietest

place for 'em."

Was he wandering now?--or had he been wandering then? Miss Castlemaine

really could not decide the question. But for having seen and heard

the boats herself, she would have believed the whole to be a

disordered dream, induced by the weakness arising from loss of blood.

"But how did you get there, Walter?"

"Down that there slippery zigzag from the chapel ruins. The tide was

partly up, you say, ma'am? Oh, I don't mind wet legs, I don't. The

door? Well, I've always known about that there door, and I pushed it

open: it don't do to talk of it, and so we don't talk of it: it

mightn't be liked, you see, ma'am. 'Twas hearing a stir inside it made

me go in: I said to myself, had a bird got there? and when I saw your

light, ma'am, I was nigh frightened to death. As to boats--I'm sure

there was none."

And that was all Mary could get from Mr. Walter Dance this morning.

Press him as she might now--though she did not dare to press him too

much for fear of exciting fever--she could get no other answer, no

confirmatory admission of any kind. And he earnestly begged her, for

the love of heaven, never to repeat a word of his "tattle" to his

father, or elsewhere.

In the course of the morning, Tom Dance and two or three

fishermen-friends of his came to the Grey Nunnery to convey Walter

home. The rumour of what had happened had caused the greatest commotion

abroad, and all the village, men and women, turned out to look for the

removal. Fishermen, for that tide, abandoned their boats, women their

homes and their household cares. No such excitement had arisen for

Greylands since the vanishing of Anthony Castlemaine as this. The

crowd attended him to Tom Dance's door with much hubbub; and after his

disappearance within it, stayed to make their comments: giving praises

to those good Grey Ladies who had received and succoured him.

"Now then," cried the doctor to his patient, when he had placed him

comfortably in bed at his father's house and seen him take some

refreshment, no one being present but themselves, "what is the true

history of this matter, Walter? I did not care to question you much

before."

"The true history?" faltered Walter; who was not the best hand at

deception that the world could produce.

"What brought you in the chapel ruins with a loaded pistol at that

untoward time of night?"

"I wanted to shoot a sea-bird: them that come abroad at night," was

the uneasy answer. "A gentleman at Stilborough gave me an order for

one. He's a-going to get him stuffed."

Mr. Parker looked at the speaker keenly. He detected the uneasiness at

being questioned.

"And you thought that hour of the morning and that particular spot the

best to shoot the bird?" he asked.

"Them birds are always hovering about the ruins there," spoke Walter,

shifting his eyes in all directions. "Always a'most. One can only get

at 'em at pitch dark, when things are dead still."

"I thought, too, that birds were generally shot with guns, not

pistols," said the surgeon; and the young man only; groaned in answer

to this: in explanation of which groan he volunteered the information

that his "arm gave him a twitch."

"Where did you get the pistol?"

"Father lent it to me," said Walter, apparently in much torment, "to

shoot the bird."

"And how came the pistol to go off as it did?"

"I was raising it to shoot one, a big fellow he was, and my elbow

knocked again that there piece of sticking-out wall in the corner. Oh,

doctor! I'm feeling rare and faint again."

Mr. Parker desisted from his investigation and went away whistling,

taking in just as much as he liked of the story, and no more. There

was evidently some mystery in the matter that he could not fathom.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ONE MORE INTERVIEW.

Mr. and Mrs. Bent were in their sitting-room, facing the sea, as many

guests around them as the room could conveniently accommodate. Much

excitement prevailed: every tongue was going.

Upon the occasion of any unusual commotion at Greylands, the Dolphin,

being the only inn in the place, was naturally made the centre point

of the public, where expressions of marvel were freely given vent to

and opinions exchanged.

Since the disappearance of Anthony Castlemaine, no event had occurred

to excite the people like unto this--the shooting himself of young

Walter Dance. To the primitive community this affair seemed nearly as

unaccountable as that. The bare fact of the pistol's having gone off

through the young man's inadvertently knocking his elbow against that

bit of projecting wall, sticking itself out in the corner of the

chapel ruins, was nothing extraordinary; it might have happened to

anybody; but the wonder manifested lay in the attendant circumstances.

After the stir and bustle of seeing Walter Dance conveyed from the

Grey Nunnery to his home had somewhat subsided, and the litter with

its bearers, and the patient, and the doctor had fairly disappeared

within doors, and they were barred out, the attendant spectators

stayed a few minutes to digest the sight, and then moved off slowly by

twos and threes to the Dolphin. The privileged among them went into

Mr. and Mrs. Bent's room: the rest stayed outside. Marvel the first

was, that young Dance should have gone out to shoot a bird at that

uncanny hour of the morning; marvel the second was, that he should

have chosen that haunted place, the chapel ruins, for nobody had

evinced more fear in a silent way of the superstitions attending the

Keep and the ghost that walked there than Walter Dance; marvel the

third was, that he should have taken a pistol to shoot at the

sea-bird, instead of a gun.

"Why couldn't he have got the bird at eight or nine o'clock at night?"

debated Ben Little, quite an old oracle in the village and the father

of young Ben. "That's the best hour for them sea-birds: nobody in their

senses would wait till a'most the dawn."

"And look here," cried out Mrs. Bent shrilly: but she was obliged to

be shrill to get a general hearing. "Why did he have a pistol with him?

Tom Dance keeps a gun: he takes it out in his boat sometimes; but he

keeps no pistol."

"Young Walter said in the night, to me and the doctor, that it was his

father's pistol when we asked him about it," interposed John Bent.

"Rubbish!" returned the landlady. "I know better. Tom Dance never

owned a pistol yet: how should he, and me not see it There's not a man

in the whole place that keeps a pistol."

"Except Mr. Superintendent Nettleby," put in old Ben.

"Nobody was bringing him in," retorted the landlady, "it's his

business to keep a pistol. My husband, as you all know, thought it was

a pistol he heard go off the night that young Mr. Castlemaine was

missed, though the Commodore stood to it that it was his gun--and, as

we said then, if it was a pistol, where did the pistol come from?

Pistols here, pistols there: I should like to ask what we are all

coming to! We sha'n't be able to step out of our door after dark next,

if pistols jump into fashion."

"At any rate, it seems it was a pistol last night, wherever he might

have got it from," said Ben Little. "And downright careless it must

have been of him to let it go off in the way he says it did--just for

knocking his elbow again' the wall. Its to be known yet whether that

there's not a lame tale; invented to excuse hisself."

Several faces were turned on old Ben Little at this. His drift was

scarcely understood.

"Excuse himself from what?" demanded Mrs. Bent sharply. "Do you

suppose the young fellow would shoot himself purposely, Ben Little?"

"What I think," said Ben, with calmness, "if one could come to the

bottom of it, is this: that there young fellow got a fright last

night--see the Grey Friar most probable; and his hand shook so that

the pistol went off of itself."

This was so entirely new a view of probabilities, that the room sunk

into temporary silence to revolve it. And not altogether an agreeable

one. The Grey Friar did enough mischief as it was, in the matter of

terrifying timid spirits: if it came to causing dreadful personal

injuries with pistols and what not, Greylands was at a pretty pass!

"Now I shouldn't wonder but that was it," cried John Bent, bringing

down his hand on the table emphatically. "He saw the Grey Friar, or

thought he did: and it put him into more fright than mortal man could

stand. You should just have seen him last night, and the terror he was

in, when me and the doctor got to him--shaking the very board he lay

upon."

"I'm sure he caused us fright enough," meekly interposed Sister Ann,

who had been drawn into the inn (nothing loth) with the crowd. "When

the Lady Superior, Sister Mary Ursula, came up to awake me and Sister

Phoeby, and we saw her trembling white face, and heard that Walter

Dance had taken refuge at the Nunnery, all shot about, neither of us

knew how we flung our things on, to get down to him."

"Walter Dance don't like going anigh the Friar's Keep any more nor

the rest of us likes it; and I can't think what should have took him

there last night," spoke up young Mr. Pike from the general shop. "I

was talking to him yesterday evening for a good half hour if I was

talking a minute; 'twas when I was shutting up: he said nothing then

about going out to shoot a bird."

"But he must have went to shoot one," insisted Ben Little. "Why say he

did it if he didn't? What else took him to the ruins at all?"

A fresh comer appeared upon the scene at this juncture in the person

of Mr. Harry Castlemaine. In passing the inn, he saw signs of the

commotion going on, inside and outside, and turned in to see and hear.

The various doubts and surmises, agitating the assembly, were poured

freely into his ear.

"Oh, it's all right--that's what young Dance went up for," said he,

speaking lightly. "A day or two ago I chanced to hear him say he

wanted to shoot a sea-bird for stuffing."

"Well, sir that may be it; no doubt it is, else why should he say

it--as I've just asked," replied Ben Little. "But what we'd like to

know is--why he should ha' stayed to the little hours of morning before

he went out. Why not have went just after dark?"

"He may have been busy," said Mr. Harry carelessly. "Or out in the

boat."

"He wasn't out in the boat last night, sir, for I was talking to him

as late as nine o'clock at our door," said young Pike. "The boat

couldn't have went out after that and come back again."

"Well, I don't think it can concern us whether he went out after this

bird a little later or a little earlier; or in fact that it signifies

at all which it was, to the matter in question," returned the Master

of Greylands' son: and it might have been noticed that his tone bore a

smattering of the haughty reserve that sometimes characterised his

father's. "The poor fellow has met with the accident; and that's quite

enough for him without being worried with queries as to the precise

half hour it happened.'

"What he says is this here, Mr. Harry: that a great big sea-bird came

flying off the sea, flapping its wings above the ruins; Dance cocked

his pistol and raised it to take aim, when his elbow struck again' the

corner wall there, and the charge went off."

"Just so, Ben; that's what Tom Dance tells me," responded Mr. Harry to

old Little, for he had been the speaker. "It will be a lesson to him,

I dare say, not to go out shooting birds in the dark again."

"Not to shoot 'em there, at any rate," rejoined Ben. "The conclusion

we've just been and drawed is this here, Mr. Harry, sir: that the Grey

Friar's shade appeared to him and set him trembling, and the dratted

pistol went off of itself."

Mr. Harry's face grew long at once. "Poor fellow! it may have been

so," he said: "and that alone would make his account confused. Well,

my friends, the least we can do, as it seems to me, is to leave Walter

Dance alone and not bother him," he continued in conclusion: and out

he went as grave as a judge. Evidently the Grey Friar was not sneered

at by Mr. Harry Castlemaine.

Sitting in a quiet corner of the room, obscured by the people and by

the hubbub, was the Dolphin's guest, George North. Not a word, spoken,

had escaped him. To every suggestive supposition, to every remark,

reasonable and unreasonable, he had listened attentively. For this

affair had made more impression on him than the facts might seem to

warrant: and in his own mind he could not help connecting this shot

and this mysterious pistol--that seemed to have come into Walter

Dance's possession unaccountably--with the shot of that past February

night, that had been so fatal to his brother.

Fatal, at least, in the conviction of many a one at Greylands. From

John Bent to Mr. George North's sister-in-law, Charlotte Guise, and

with sundry intermediate persons the impression existed and could not

be shaken off. Mr. North had never given in to the belief: he had put

faith in Mr. Castlemaine: he had persistently hoped that Anthony might

not be dead; that he would reappear some time and clear up the

mystery: but an idea had now taken sudden hold of him that this second

edition of a shot, or rather the cause of it, would be found to hold

some connection with the other shot: and that the two might proceed

from the Grey Friar. Not the ghost of a Grey Friar, but a living and

substantial one, who might wish to keep his precincts uninvaded. We,

who are in the secret of this later shot, can see how unfounded the

idea was: but Mr. North was not in the secret, and it had taken (he

knew not why) firm hold of him.

First of all, he had no more faith in the lame account of Mr. Walter

Dance than the doctor had. It may be remembered that when the landlord

was telling him of the accident the previous night, Mr. North remarked

that he had been with Dance for a sail only that same morning. During

this sail, which had lasted about two hours, the conversation had

turned on the Friar's Keep--Mr. North frequently, in an apparently

indirect manner, did turn his converse on it--and Walter Dance had

expressed the most unequivocal faith in the Grey Monk that haunted it,

and protested, with a shake of superstitions terror, that he would not

go "anigh them parts" after dark for all the world. Therefore Mr.

North did not take in the report that he had voluntarily gone to the

chapel ruins to shoot a bird in the dead of the night.

The talkers around Mr. North all agreed, receiving their version of

the affair from Sister Ann and John Bent, that Walter Dance's account

was imperfect, confused, and not clearly to be understood; and that he

was three parts beside himself with nervous fear when he gave it. All

food for Mr. George North: but he listened on, saying nothing.

When Harry Castlemaine quitted the Dolphin, he turned in the direction

of Stilborough; he was going to walk thither--which was nothing for

his long legs. In ascending the hill past the church, which was a

narrow and exceedingly lonely part of the road, the yew-trees

overshadowing the gloomy churchyard on one side, the dark towering

cliff on the other, he encountered Jane Hallet. She had been to

Stilborough on some errand connected with her knitting-work, and was

now coming back again. They met just abreast of the churchyard gate,

and simultaneously stopped: as if to stop was with both of them a

matter of course.

"Where have you been, Jane?" asked Mr. Harry.

"To Stilborough," she answered.

"You must have gone early."

"Yes, I went for wool"--indicating a brown-paper parcel in her hand.

"For wool!" he repeated, in a somewhat annoyed tone. "I have told you

not to worry yourself with more of that needless work, Jane."

"And make my aunt more displeased than she is with me!" returned Jane

sadly. "I must keep on with it as long as I can, while in her sight."

"Well, I think you must have enough to do without that," he answered,

dropping the point. "How pale you are, Jane."

"I am tired. It is a long walk, there and back, without rest. I sat

down on one of the shop stools while they weighed the wool, but it was

not much rest."

"There again! I have told you the walk is too far. Why don't you

attend to me, Jane?"

"I wish I could: but it is so difficult. You know what my aunt is."

"I am not sure, Jane, but it will be better to--to--" he stopped,

seemingly intent on treading a stone into the path--"to make the

change now," he went on, "and get the bother over. It must come, you

know."

"Not yet; no need to do it yet," she quickly answered. "Let it be put

off as long as it can be. I dread it frightfully."

"Yes, that's it: you are tormenting yourself into

fiddle-strings. Don't be foolish, Jane. It is I who shall have to bear

the storm, not you: and my back's broad enough, I hope."

She sighed deeply: her pale, thoughtful, pretty face cast up in sad

apprehension towards the blue autumn sky. A change came over its

expression: some remembrance seemed suddenly to occur to her.

"Have you heard any news about Walter Dance?" she asked with

animation. "As I came down the cliff this morning, Mrs. Bent was

leaving the baker's with some hot rolls in her apron, and she crossed

over to tell me that Walter had shot himself accidentally at the

chapel ruins in the middle of the night. Is it true?"

"Shot himself instead of a sea-bird," slightingly responded Mr. Harry.

"And in the chapel ruins?"

"I hear he says so."

"But--that is not likely to be the truth, is it?"

"How should I know, Jane?"

She lodged the paper parcel on the top of the gate, holding it with

one hand, and looked wistfully across the graveyard. Harry Castlemaine

whistled to a sparrow that was chirping on a branch of the nearest

yew-tree.

"Was it Mr. Nettleby who did it?" she inquired, in a low, hesitating

whisper.

"Mr. Nettleby!" repeated Harry Castlemaine in astonishment, breaking

of his whistle to the bird. "What in the world makes you ask that

Jane?"

A faint colour passed over her thin face, and she paused before

answering.

"Mrs. Bent said she thought nobody in the place possessed a pistol

except Superintendent Nettleby."

He looked keenly at Jane: at her evident uneasiness. She was growing

pale again; paler than before; with what looked like an unnatural

pallor. Mr. Harry Castlemaine's brow knitted itself into lines, with

the effort to make Jane out.

"I don't like the chapel ruins: or the Friar's Keep," she went on, in

the same low tone. "I wish nobody ever went near them. I wish you

would not go!"

"Wish I would not go!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean, Jane?"

"It may be your turn next to be shot," she said with rising emotion,

so much so that the words came out jerkingly.

"I cannot tell what it is that you are driving at," he answered,

regarding searchingly the evidently tired frame, the unmistakable

agitation and anxiety of the thin, white face. "What have I to do with

the chapel ruins? I don't go roaming about at night with a pistol to

shoot sea-birds."

"If you would but make a confidante of me!" she sighed.

"What have I to confide? If you will tell me what it is, perhaps I

may. I don't know."

She glanced up at him, flushing again slightly. His countenance was

unembarrassed, open, and kind in its expression; but the decisive lips

were set firmly. Whether he knew what she meant, or whether he did

not, it was evident that he would not meet her in the slightest

degree.

"Please do not be angry with me," faltered Jane.

"When am I angry with you? Simply, though, I do not understand you

this morning, Jane. I think you must have tired yourself too much."

"I am tired," she replied; "and I shall be glad to get home to rest.

My aunt, too, will be thinking it is time I was back."

She moved her parcel of wool off the gate, and, after another word or

two, they parted: Jane going down hill, Harry Castlemaine up. Before

he was quite beyond view, he stood to look back at her, and saw she

had turned to look after him. A bright smile illumined his handsome

face, and he waved his hand to her gaily. Few, very few, were there,

so attractive as Harry Castlemaine.

Jane's lips parted with a farewell word, though he could not hear it,

and her pretty dimples were all smiles as she went onwards. At the

foot of the cliff she came upon little Bessy Gleeson in trouble. The

child had fallen, goodness knew from what height, had cut both her

knees, and was sobbing finely. Jane took the little thing up tenderly,

kissed and soothed her, and then carried her up the cliff to the

Gleesons' cottage. What with Bessy and what with the parcel, she could

not breathe when she got there. Down she dropped on the stone by the

door, her face whiter than ever.

"Where's mother?" she asked, as some of the little ones, Polly

included, came running out.

But Nancy Gleeson had seen the ascent from the side window, and came

forward, her hands all soap-suds. She was struck with Jane's exhausted

look.

"Bessy has fallen down, Mrs. Gleeson. Her knees are bleeding."

"And how could you think of lugging her all up the cliff, Miss Jane! I

declare you be as white as a sheet. A fat, heavy child like her! Fell

down on your knees, have you, you tiresome little grub. There's one or

another on you always a-doing of it."

"It is a warm morning, and I have been walking to and from

Stilborough," remarked Jane, as she rose to go on, and not choosing to

be told she looked white without accounting for it. "Wash her knees

with some hot water please, Mrs. Gleeson: I dare say she is in pain,

poor little thing."

"Lawk a me, Miss Jane," the woman called after her, "if you had

half-a-dozen of 'em about you always you'd know better nor to take

notice o' such trifles as knees." But Jane was already nearly out of

hearing.

Harry was not the only one of the Castlemaine family who went that day

to Stilborough. In the full brightness of the afternoon, the close

carriage of the Master of Greylands, attended by its liveried

servants, might have been seen bowling on its way thither, and one

lady, attired in the dress of the Grey Sisters, seated inside it. A

lady who was grand, and noble, and beautiful, in spite of the simple

attire--Mary Ursula.

She was about to pay a visit to that friend of hers on whom misfortune

had fallen--Mrs. Ord. The double calamity--loss of husband and loss of

fortune--reaching Mrs. Ord by the same mail, had thrown her upon a

sick-bed; and she was at all times delicate. The letter that Mary had

sat up to write was despatched by a messenger early in the morning:

and she had craved the loan of her uncle's close carriage to convey

her on a personal visit. The close carriage: Mary shrunk (perhaps

from the novelty of it) from showing herself this first time in her

changed dress among her native townspeople.

The carriage left her at Mrs. Ord's house, and was directed

to return for her in an hour; and Mary was shown up to the

sick-chamber. It was a sad interview: this poor Mrs. Ord--whose woes,

however, need not be entered upon here in detail, as she has nothing

to do with the story--was but a year or two older than Mary Ursula.

They had been girls together. She was very ill now: and Mary felt that

at this early stage little or no consolation could be offered. She

herself had had her sorrows since they last met, and it was a trying

hour to both of them. Before the hour had expired, Mary took her leave

and went down to the drawing-room to wait for the carriage.

She had closed the door, and was halfway across the

richly-carpeted floor, before she became aware that any one was in the

room. It was a gentleman--who rose from the depths of a lounging-chair

at her approach. Every drop of blood in Mary's veins seemed to stand

still, and then rush wildly on: her sight momentarily failed her, her

senses were confused: and but that she had shut the door behind her,

and come so far, she might have retreated again. For it was William

Blake-Gordon.

They stood facing each other for an instant in silence, both painfully

agitated. Mary's grey bonnet was in her hand; she had taken it off in

the sick-chamber; he held an open letter, that he had been apparently

reading to pass away the time, while the servants should carry his

message to their sick mistress and bring back an answer. Mary saw the

writing of the letter and recognized it for Agatha Mountsorrel's. In

his confusion, as he hastily attempted to refold the letter, it

escaped his hand, and fluttered to the ground. The other hand he was

holding out to her.

She met it, scarcely perhaps conscious of what she did. He felt the

trembling of the fingers he saw the agitation of the wan white face.

Not a word did either of them speak. Mary sat down on a sofa, he took

a chair near, after picking up his letter.

"What a terrible calamity this is that has fallen on Mrs. Ord!" he

exclaimed, seizing upon it as something to say.

"Two calamities," answered Mary.

"Yes indeed.. Her husband dead, and her fortune gone! My father sent

me here to inquire personally after her; to see her if possible. He

and Colonel Ord were good friends."

"I do not think she can see you. She said that I was the only one

friend who would have been admitted to her."

"I did not expect she would: but Sir Richard made me come. You know

his way."

Mary slightly nodded assent. She raised her hand and gently pushed

from her temple the braid of her thick brown hair; as though conscious

of the whiteness of her face, she would fain cover it until the colour

returned. Mr. Blake-Gordon, a very bad hand at deception at all times,

suffered his feelings to get the better of conventionality now, and

burst forth into truth.

"Oh, Mary! how like this is to the old days! To have you by me

alone!--to be sitting once more together."

"Like unto them?" she returned sadly. "No. That can never be."

"Would to heaven it could!" he aspirated.

"A strange wish, that, to hear from you now."

"And, perhaps you think, one I should not have spoken. It is always in

my heart, Mary."

"Then it ought not to be."

"I see," he said. "You have been hearing tales about me."

"I have heard one tale. I presume it to be a true one. And

I--I--" her lips were trembling grievously--"I wish you both happiness

with all my heart."

Mr. Blake-Gordon pushed his chair back and began to pace the room

restlessly. At that moment a servant came in with a message to him

from her mistress. He merely nodded a reply, and the girl went away

again.

"Do you know what it has all been for me, Mary?" he asked, halting

before her, his brow flushed, his lips just as much agitated as hers.

"Do you guess what it is? Every ray of sunshine went out of my life

with you."

"At the time you--you may have thought that," she tremblingly

answered. "But why recall it? The sun has surely begun to shine for

you again."

"Never in this world. Never will it shine as it did then."

"Nay, but that, in the face of facts, is scarcely credible," she

rejoined, striving to get up as much calmness, and to speak as

quietly, as though Mr. Blake-Gordon had never been more to her than an

acquaintance or friend; nerving herself to answer him now as such.

"You are, I believe, about to"--a cough took her just there, and she

suddenly put her hand to her throat--"marry Agatha."

"It is true. At least, partially true."

"Partially?"

"For Heaven's sake, Mary, don't speak to me in that coldly indifferent

tone!" he passionately broke in. "I cannot bear it from you."

"How would you have me speak?" she asked, rapidly regaining her

self-possession; and her tone was certainly kind, rather than cold,

though her words were redolent of calm reasoning. "The past is past,

you know, and circumstances have entirely changed. It will be better

to meet them as such: to regard them as they are."

"Yes, they are changed," he answered bitterly. "You have made yourself

into a lay-nun----"

"Nay, not that," she interrupted with a smile.

"A Sister of Charity, then"--pointing to her grey dress. "And I, as

the world says, am to espouse Agatha Mountsorrel."

"But surely that is true."

"It is true in so far as that I have asked her to be my wife: That I

should live to say that to you of another woman, Mary! She has

accepted me. But, as to the marriage, I hope it will not take place

yet awhile. I do not press for it."

"You shall both have my best and truest prayers for your happiness,"

rejoined Mary, her voice again slightly trembling. "Agatha will make

you a good wife. The world calls her haughty; but she will not be

haughty to her husband."

"How coolly you can contemplate it!" he cried, in reproach and pain.

Just for one single moment, in her heart's lively anguish, the

temptation assailed her to tell him what it really was to her, and how

deeply she loved him still. She threw it behind her, a faint smile

parting her lips.

"William, you know well that what I say is all I can say. I am wedded

to the life I have chosen; you will soon be wedded actually to another

than me. Nothing remains for us in common: save the satisfaction of

experiencing good wishes for the welfare of the other."

"It is not love, or any feeling akin to it, that has caused me to

address Agatha Mountsorrel----" he was beginning; but she interrupted

him with decision.

"I would rather not hear this. It is not right of you to say it."

"I will say it. Mary, be still. It is but a word or two; and I will

have my way in this. It is in obedience to my father that I have

addressed Miss Mountsorrel. Since the moment when you and I parted, he

has never ceased to urge her upon me, to throw us together in every

possible way. I resisted for a long while; but my nature is weakly

yielding--as you have cause to know--and at length I was badgered into

it. Forgive the word, Mary. Badgered by Sir Richard, until I went to

her and said, Will you be my wife? The world had set the rumour

running long before that; but the world was in haste. And now that I

have told you so much, I am thankful. I meant to make the opportunity

of telling you had one not offered: for the worst pain of all, to me,

would be, that you should fancy I could love another. The hearing that

I have engaged myself again in this indecent haste--your hearing

it--is enough shame for me."

The handsome chariot of the Master of Greylands, its fine horses

prancing and curvetting, passed the window and drew up at the house.

Mary rose.

"I hope with all my heart that you will love her as you once loved.

me," she said to him in a half whisper, as she rang the bell and

caught up her bonnet. "To know that, William, will make my own life

somewhat less lonely."

"Did you ever care for me?" broke from him.

"Yes. But the past is past."

He stood in silence while she tied on her grey bonnet, watching her

slender fingers as they trembled with the silk strings. A servant

appeared in answer to the ring. Mary was drawing on her gloves.

"The door," said Mr. Blake-Gordon.

"Good-bye," she said to him, holding out her hand.

He wrung it almost to pain. "You will allow me to see you to your

carriage?"

She took the arm he held out to her and they went through the hall and

down the steps together. The footman had the carriage door open, and

he, her ex-lover, placed her in. Not another word was spoken. The man

sprang up to his place behind, and the chariot rolled away. For a full

minute after its departure, William Blake-Gordon was still standing

looking after it, forgetting to put his hat on: forgetting, as it

seemed, all created things.

CHAPTER XXX.

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.

Combined With Mr. Walter Dance's remorse for having betrayed to Miss

Castlemaine what he did betray, in that paroxysm of fear when he

thought the world was closing for him, was a wholesome dread of the

consequences to himself. What his father's anger would be and what Mr.

Castlemaine's punishment of him might be, when they should learn all

that his foolish tongue had said, Walter did not care to contemplate.

As he lay that night in the Grey Nunnery after the surgeon's visit,

Sister Ann watching by his pallet, he went through nearly as much

agony of fear from this source as he had just gone through from the

other. While he believed his life was in peril, that that mysterious

part of him, the Soul, was about to be summoned to render up its

account, earth and earth's interests were as nothing: utterly lost,

indeed, beside that momentous hour which he thought was at hand. But,

after reassurance had set in, and the doctor had quietly convinced him

there was no danger, that he would shortly be well again, then the

worldly fear rose to the surface. Sister Ann assumed that his starts

and turns in the bed arose from bodily pain or restlessness: in point

of fact it was his mind that was tormenting him and would not let him

be still.

Of course it was no fault of his that Miss Castlemaine had found him

in the cloistered vaults,--or that he had found her, whichever it

might be called--or that there was a door that he never knew of

opening into them, or a passage between them and the Grey Nunnery, or

that the pistol had gone off and shot him. For all this he could not

be blamed. But what he could, and would be blamed for was, that he had

committed the astounding folly of betraying the secret relating to the

Friar's Keep; for it might, so to say, destroy all connected with it.

Hence his resolve to undo, so far as he could, the mischief with Miss

Castlemaine, by denying to her that his disclosure had reason or

foundation in it: and by asserting that it must have been the effect

of his disordered brain.

Believing that he had done this, when his morning interview with

Sister Mary Ursula was over: believing that he had convinced her his

words had been but the result of his sick fancies, he began next to

ask himself why he need tell the truth at all, even to his father. The

only thing to be accounted for was the shot to himself and his turning

up at the Grey Nunnery: but he might just as well stand to the tale

that he had told the doctor, to his father, as well as to the world:

namely, that he had met with the injury in the chapel ruins, and had

crawled to the Grey Nunnery for succour.

This happy thought he carried out; and Tom Dance was no wiser than

other people. When once deception is entered upon, the course is

comparatively easy: "ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute," say the

French: and Mr. Walter Dance, truthful and honest though he loved to

be, found himself quite an adept at farce-relating before the first

day was over.

Not that Tom Dance, wise in his nearly fifty years, took it all in

unquestioningly. There was something about the story, and about

Wally's voice and face and shifting eyes when he told it, that rather

puzzled him: in short, that created somewhat of a doubt: but the very

impossibility (as he looked upon it) of the injuries having occurred

in any other way served to dispel suspicion. The idea that there was a

secret passage from the Friar's Keep to the Grey Nunnery could no more

have entered into Tom Dance's imagination, than that there was a

passage to the moon.

When the indoor hubbub and bustle of the removal of Walter home from

the Grey Nunnery was over, and the numerous friends, admitted one at a

time to see him, had gone again, and Walter had had some refreshing

sleep towards sunset, then Tom Dance thought the time and opportunity

had come to have a talk with him. The old grandmother, Dame Dance--who

lived in her solitary abode under the cliff at some distance, and

whose house at high water was not accessible except by boat--had come

up to nurse and tend him, bringing her white apron and a nightcap. But

Tom Dance sent his mother home again. He was a good son, and he told

her that she should not have the trouble: he and Sarah could attend to

Wally without further help. Sarah was his daughter, Walter's sister,

and several years older than the young man. She was a cripple, poor

thing, but very useful in the house; a shy, silent young woman, who

could only walk with crutches; so that Greylands scarcely saw her out

of doors from year's end to year's end. Now and then, on some fine

Sunday she would contrive to get to church, but that was all.

Tom Dance's house was the last in the village and next the beach, its

side windows facing the sea. It was twilight, but there was no candle

in Walter's room yet, and as Tom Dance sat down at the window, he saw

the stars coming out over the grey waters, one by one, and heard the

murmuring of the waves.

"D'ye feel that ye could peck a bit, Wally?" asked he, turning his

head sideways towards the bed.

"Sarah's gone to make me some arrowroot, father."

"That's poor stuff, lad."

"It's what Dr. Parker said I was to have."

"Look here, Wally," continued Tom, after a pease, during which he had

seemed to be looking out to sea again, "I can't make out what should

have taken you up on to the chapel ruins. Why didn't you follow us to

the Hutt?"

To account feasibly for this one particular item in the tale, was

Walter's chief difficulty. He knew that: and while his father was

entering upon it in the morning, had felt truly thankful that they

were interrupted.

"I don't know what took me," replied Walter, with a sort of

semi-wonder in his own voice, as though the fact were just as much of

a puzzle to himself as it could be to his father. "I stayed behind to

lock up: and the rest of you had all gone on to the Hutt ever so long:

and--and so I went up and out by the chapel ruins."

"One would think you must ha' been in a dream, lad."

"It's rare and lonely up that other long passage by oneself," hazarded

Walter. "You are up at the chapel ruins and out that way in no time."

"Rare and lonely!" sharply retorted the elder man, as though the words

offended him. "Are you turning coward, lad?"

"Not I, father," warmly rejoined Walter, perceiving that plea would

not find favour. "Any way, I don't know what it was took me to go up to

the chapel ruins. I went; and that seems to be all about it."

"It was an unpardonable hazardous thing to do. Suppose you had been

seen coming out o' the Keep at that time? And with a pistol!"

"I wish the pistol had been at the bottom o' the sea, I do!" groaned

the invalid.

"What did you take the pistol up for?--why didn't you leave it in the

usual place with the other pistols?" Walter groaned again, "I don't

know."

"Tell ye what, lad: but that I know you b'ain't given to drink, I

should say you'd got a drop of the crew's old Hollands into you."

"Janson did offer me some," said young Walter, from under the

bedclothes.

"And you took it! Well you must ha' been a fool. Why, your grandmother

'ud be fit to----"

"I wasn't drunk: don't think that father," interrupted Walter, after a

rapid mental controversy as to whether, of the two evils, it might not

be better to confess to the Hollands--though, in point of fact, he had

not touched a drop. "See here: it's no good talking about it, now it's

done and over."

"And--if you did get out by wary of the chapel ruins, what on earth

made you go letting off the pistol there?"

"Well, it was an accident, that was: I didn't go to let it off. That

there wall in the corner knocked again' my elbow."

"What took you to the corner?"

"I thought I'd just give a look after the boats that were getting off,"

said Walter, who had spent that day as well as the night, rehearsing

difficult items in his mind. "The beastly pistol went off somehow, and

down I dropped."

"And of all things," continued the fisherman, "to think you should ha'

knocked up the Grey Sisters! It must have been Hollands."

"I was bleeding to death, father. The Grey Nunnery is the nearest

place."

"No, it's not. Nettleby's is the nearest."

"As if I should go there!" cried Walter, opening his eyes at the

bare suggestion.

"And as near as any is the Hutt. That's where you ought to have come

on to. Why did you not? Come!"

"I--I--never thought of the Hutt," said poor Walter, wondering when

this ordeal would be over.

"You hadn't got your head upon you: that's what it was. Wally, lad,

I'd a'most rather see you drownded in the sea some rough day afore my

eyes, nor see you take to drink."

"'Twasn't drink, 'twas the sight of the blood," deprecatingly returned

Walter. "The Grey Ladies were rare and good to me, father."

"That don't excuse your having went there. In two or three minutes

more you'd have reached your home here--and we might ha' kept it all

quiet. As it is, every tongue in the place is a wagging over it."

"Let 'em wag," suggested Walter. "They can't know nothing."

"How do you know what they'll find out, with their prying and their

marvelling?" demanded the angry man. "Let 'em wag, indeed!"

"I could hardly get to the Nunnery," pleaded Walter. "I thought I was

dying."

"There'll be a rare fuss about it with the Castlemaines! I know that.

Every knock that has come to the door this blessed day I've took to be

the Master o' Greylands and shook in my shoes. A fine market you'll

bring your pigs to, if you be to go on like this, a getting yourself

and everybody else into trouble! George Hallet, poor fellow, would

never have been such a fool."

Reproached on all sides, self-convicted of worse folly than his father

had a notion of, weak in body, fainting in spirit, and at his very

wits' end to ward off the home questions, Walter ended by bursting

into a flood of tears. That disarmed Tom Dance; and he let the matter

drop. Sarah limped in with the arrowroot, and close upon that Mr.

Parker arrived.

The bright moon, wanting yet some days to its full, shone down on the

chapel ruins. Seated against the high, blank wall of the Grey Nunnery,

his sketch-book before him, his pencil in hand, was Mr. North. He had

come there to take the Friar's Keep by moonlight: at least, the side

portion of it that looked that way. The chapel ruins with its broken

walls made the foreground: the half-ruined Keep, with its Gothic door

of entrance, the back; to the right the sketch took in a bit of the

sea. No doubt it would make an attractive picture when done in

watercolours, and one that must bear its own painful interest for

George North.

He worked attentively and rapidly, his thoughts meanwhile as busy as

his hands. The moon gave him almost as much light as he would have had

by day: though it cast dark shades as well as brightness; and that

would make the chief beauty of the completed painting.

Somewhere about a week had passed since the accident to Walter Dance,

and the young man was three parts well again.

The occurrence had rarely been out of Mr. North's mind since. He had

taken the opportunity in an easy and natural manner of calling in at

Dance's to pay a visit to the invalid, to inquire after his progress

and condole with him; and he that been struck during that interview

with the same idea that had come to him before--namely, that the story

told was not real. Putting a searching question or two, his eyes

intently fixed upon the wounded man's countenance, he was surprised--or,

perhaps not surprised--to see the face flush, the eyes turn away,

the answering words become hesitating. Nothing, however, came of it,

save this impression. Walter parried every question, telling the same

tale that he had told others; but the eyes of the speaker, I say,

could not look Mr. North in the face, the ring of the voice was not

true. Mr.. North asked this and that; but he could not ask too

pointedly or persistently, his apparent motive being concern for the

accident, slightly tempered with curiosity.

"It was not the ghost of the Grey Friar that shot you, was it?" he

questioned at last with a joking smile. Walter evidently took it in

earnest, and shook his head gravely.

"I never saw the ghost at all, sir, that night: nor thought of it,

either. I was only thinking of the bird."

"You did not get the bird, after all."

"No; he flew away when the pistol went off. It startled him, I know:

you should have heard his wings a-flapping. Father says he'll shoot

one the first opportunity he gets."

How much was false, and how much true, Mr. North could not discern. So

far as the bird went, he was inclined to believe in it--Walter must

have had some motive for going to the ruins, and, he fancied, a very

strong one. It was the shot itself and the hour of its occurrence that

puzzled him. But Mr. North came away from the interview no wiser than

he had entered on it: except that his doubts were strengthened.

As if to give colouring to, and confirm his son's story, a day or two

subsequent to the accident, Tom Dance, being in the company of some

other fishermen at the time, and having his gun with him, aimed at a

large grey sea-gull that came screeching over their heads, as they

stood on the beach, and brought him down. The next morning, in the

face and eyes of all Greylands, he went marching off with the dead

bird to Stilborough, and left it with a naturalist to be stuffed: and

pedestrians passing the naturalist's shop, were regaled with a sight

of Le great bird exhibited there, its wings stretched out to the

uttermost. But it turned out upon inquiry--far people, swayed by their

curiosity, made very close inquiries, and seemed never to tire of

doing it--that the bird had not been ordered by the gentleman at

Stilborough, as Walter Dance was at first understood to say. Dance and

his son had intended to make a present of one to him. As they would

now do.

All these matters, with the various speculations they brought in their

train, were swaying Mr. North's mind, as he worked on this evening by

moonlight. The occurrence had certainly spurred up his intention to

discover Anthony's fate, rendering him more earnest in the pursuit. It

could not be said that he was not earnest in it before; but there was

nothing he could lay hold of, nothing tangible. In point of fact,

there was not anything now.

"Do you belong to me?" he apostrophised, casting his eyes towards the

distant chimneys of Greylands' Rest, his thoughts having turned on the

Master of Greylands. "Failing poor Anthony to inherit, is the property

mine? I would give much to know. My Uncle James seems too honourable a

man to keep what is not his own: and yet--why did he not show to

Anthony the tenure by which he holds the estate?--why does he not show

it now?--for he must know how people talk, and the doubts that are

cast on him. I cannot tell what to think. Personally, I like him very

much; and he is so like----"

A sudden shade fell on Mr. North's book, and made him look up

abruptly. It was caused by a cloud passing over the face of the moon.

A succession of light clouds, this cloud the vanguard of them, came

sailing quickly up from beyond the sea, obscuring, until they should

have dispersed, the silvery brightness of the Queen of night. Mr.

North's sketch was, however, nearly done; and a few quick strokes

completed it.

Putting it into his portfolio, he rose, took a look out over the sea,

and passed into the Friar's Keep. Many a time, by night or by day,

since his first arrival at Greylands, had he gone stealthily into that

place; but never had found aught to reward him by sight or sound.

Thrice he had explored it with a light: but he had seen only the

monotonous space of pillared cloisters that all the world might

explore at will. Silent and deserted as ever, were they now: and

George North was on the point of turning out again, when the sound of

light footsteps smote on his ear, and he drew back between the wall

and the first pillar near the entrance.

He had left the door wide open--which was, perhaps, an incautious

thing to do--and some rays of moonlight came streaming in. He was in

the dark: all the darker, perhaps, the nook where he stood, from the

contrast presented by these shining rays of light. George North held

his breath while he looked and listened.

Darkening the shining moonlight at the entrance came a woman's figure,

entering far more stealthily and softly than Mr. North had entered.

She stole along amid the pillars, and then stopped suddenly, as though

intent on listening. She was not quite beyond the vision of Mr. North:

his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and the rays at the open

door threw a semi-light beyond: and he saw her push back her hood and

bend her ear to listen. Quite two minutes passed thus they seemed like

five to George North, he standing still and motionless as the grave.

Then she turned, retraced her steps, and went out again. Mr. North

stole to the door in her wake, and looked after her.

Yes, he thought so! It was Jane Hallet. She had gone to the edge now,

and was gazing straight out to seaward, her hands raised over her eyes

to steady their sight. Mr. North knew her only by the outline of her

figure, for the hood of her cloak was well on; but he could not be

mistaken. Being about himself of an evening, he had seen her about;

had seen her more than once come to these ruins and stand as she was

standing now: once only before had she entered the Keep. The precise

purport of these manoeuvres he could not fathom, but felt sure that

she was tracking, and yet hiding herself from, Harry Castlemaine.

Another minute, and then she turned.

"Not to-night," Mr. North heard her say aloud to herself as she passed

the door of the Keep. And she went through the gate and walked rapidly

away towards Greylands.

Mr. North took out his watch to see the time, holding it to the

moonlight. Half-past nine. Not too late, he decided, to go to

Greylands' Rest and pay a short visit to Madame Guise. The family were

out that evening, dining at Stilborough--which information he had

picked up from Mrs. Bent: had they been at home, he would not have

thought of presenting himself so late. It might be a good opportunity

to get a few minutes alone with his sister-in-law, and he wanted to

tell her that he had heard from Gap.

Crossing the road, he went striding quickly up the lane, and was

nearly run over by Commodore Teague's spring cart, which came with a

bolt unexpectedly out of the turning. The Commodore, who was driving,

did not see him: he had his head bent down nearly to the off shaft,

doing something to the harness. The cart clattered on its way, and Mr.

North pursued his.

Turning in at the gate of Greylands' Rest, and passing round to the

broad path, he heard a voice singing; a voice that he knew and loved

too well. Ethel was not gone to the dinner, then! She sat alone at the

piano in the red parlour, its glass doors being thrown wide open,

singing a love ditty to herself in the moonlight. Mr. North, every

pulse of his heart beating with its sense of bliss, drew himself up

against the wall beside the window to listen.

It was a very absurdly-foolish song as to words, just as three parts

of the songs mostly are; but its theme was love, and that was enough

for Ethel and for him; to both the words were no doubt nothing short

of sublime. A kind of refrain followed every verse: the reader shall

at least have the benefit of that.

"And if my love prove faithless,

What will be left for me?--

I'll let him think me scathless,

And lay me down and dee."

There were five or six verses in the ballad, and these lines came in

after every verse. Ethel had a sweet voice and sang well. Mr. George

North stood against the wall outside, his ears and his heart alike

taking in the song, the words being as distinct as though they were

spoken. The final refrain had two more lines added to it:

"But I know that he is not faithless:

He'll be true to me for aye."

Ethel left the piano with the last word and came to the window, her

bright face, raised to look at the moon, glowing with a sweet, hopeful

expression that seemed to tell of love.

"But I know that he is not faithless:

He'll be true to me for aye."

These words were repeated over to herself as she stood; not sung but

spoken; repeated as though she were making the romance her own; as

though the words were a fact, an assurance to herself that somebody

would be true to her. George North went forward, and Ethel was

startled.

"Oh, Mr. North!" she exclaimed. "How you frightened me!"

He took her hand--both hands--in his contrition, begging pardon for

his thoughtlessness, and explaining that he waited there until she

finished her song, not to enter and disturb it. It was one of the

sweetest moments in the life of either, this unexpected meeting, all

around so redolent of poetry and romance. Mr. North had to release her

hands, but their pulses were thrilling with the contact.

"I thought you were gone out to dinner," he said.

"No, I was not invited. Only papa and mamma and Harry."

"Or of course I should not have attempted to intrude so late as this.

I thought, believing Madame Guise alone, it would be a good

opportunity to see her. I suppose she is at home."

"Oh yes; she will be glad to see you," replied Ethel, her heart

beating so wildly with its love and his presence that she hardly knew

what she did say. "Flora is very troublesome to-night, and Madame has

had to go up to her. She will soon be back again."

Very troublesome indeed. The young lady, taking the advantage of Mr.

and Mrs. Castlemaine's absence, had chosen to go into one of her

wildest moods and promenade the house en robe de =it. At this present

moment she was setting Madame at defiance from various turns in the

staircases, executing a kind of bo-peep dance.

George North had stepped into the room, and they were standing side by

side at the open window in the moonlight, each perfectly conscious of

what the companionship was to the other. He began telling her where he

had been and what doing; and opened the sketch-book to show her the

drawing.

"Sitting in the chapel ruins all that while alone by moonlight!"

exclaimed Ethel. "It is plain you are not a native of Greylands, Mr.

North. I question whether any other man in the place would do it."

"I am not a poor simple fisherman, Ethel," he laughed. He had called

her "Ethel" some time now, led to it by the example of others at

Greylands' Rest.

"I was not thinking altogether of the fishermen. I don't fancy even

Harry Castlemaine would do it."

"No?" said Mr. North, an amused smile lingering on his

"At least, I have heard him, more than once, express a dislike of the

place; that is, of going to it--had he to do such a thing--after dark.

Did you see anything?"

"Only----" Mr. North suddenly arrested his words. He had been about to

say, Only Jane Hallet. Various reasons prompted him to close his lips

on the point to Miss Reene.

"Only shadows," he continued, amending the phrase. "The moon went

under a cloud now and then. It is a most beautiful night out at sea."

Her slender fingers were trembling as she held one side of the

sketch-book, he holding the other; trembling with sweet emotion. Not a

word of his love had Mr. North said to her; not a word could he say to

her under present circumstances; but Ethel felt that it was hers, hers

for all time. Fate might part them in this life; each, it was possible,

might marry apart; but he would never love another as he loved her.

"How exact it is!" she cried, looking at the page, which the bright

clear moonlight fell upon. "I should know it anywhere. You have even

got that one little dark stone in the middle of the wall that seems to

have been put in after the other stones and is so unlike them."

"I made it darker that I may know which it is for the painting," he

answered. "It will make a nice picture."

"Oh, very. When shall you paint it?"

"That I don't know. Some of these odd days."

"You are not painting at all now."

"No. I don't feel settled enough at the Dolphin for that."

A pause of silence. In changing the position of his hand, still

holding the book, Mr. North somehow let it touch hers. Ethel's voice

trembled slightly when next she spoke.

"Shall you be going over to France again?"

"Undoubtedly. In a letter I received this morning from some of my

friends there, they inquire when it is to be. I am lingering here

long, they think. It was to tell Madame Guise I had heard, for she

knows them, that brought me here so late."

"You--you said one day, I remember, that you might probably settle in

France," resumed Ethel, inwardly shivering as she spoke it. "Shall you

do so?"

"It is quite uncertain, Ethel. If things turn out as--as they ought to

turn, I should then settle in England. Probably somewhere in this

neighbourhood."

Their eyes met: Ethel looking up, he down. With the yearning love,

that sat in each gaze, was mingled an expression of deep sadness.

"Circumstances at present are so very doubtful," resumed Mr. North.

"They may turn out well; or very ill----"

"Very ill!" involuntarily interrupted Ethel.

"Yes, they may."

The answer was given in a marked, decisive tone. For the doubt that

ran through his mind--that had run through it much lately--was this:

If it should indeed prove that the Master of Greylands had dealt ill

with Anthony, George North could scarcely bring himself to marry one

so closely connected with Greylands' Rest as Ethel.

"And--in that case?" she continued after a pause, during which he

seemed to have been lost in thought.

"In that case? Oh, I should become a wandering Arab again roaming the

world at large."

"And settle eventually in France?"

"Very likely--if I settled anywhere. It is all so uncertain, Ethel,

that I scarcely like to glance at it. I may hold property in England

some time: and that might necessitate my living on it."

"Do you mean an estate? Such as this?"

"Yes, such as this," he answered with a passing, curious smile.

"Meanwhile I am so happy in the present time, in my idle

life--transferring some of the beauties of your country to enrich my

portfolio, with the hospitable Dolphin roof over my head, and the

grand, ever-moving sea before me like a glorious panorama--that I fear

I am too willing to forget the future care which may come."

Not another word did either speak: the silence, with its pleasure and

its pain, was all too eloquent. The sketch-book was held between them

still: and, in turning over its pages to look at former sketches,

their hands could not help--or, rather, did not help--coming in

contact. What bliss it was!

"Why, you are quite in the dark, my dear! Why--dear me! who is it?"

They turned at the voice--that of Madame Guise. She had just left Miss

Flora.

"Not in the dark, but in the moonlight," said Mr. North, holding out

his hand.

"I did not know that you were here," she answered. "It is late."

"Very late: I hope you will forgive me. But I have been here some

little time. I was taking a sketch by moonlight not far off, and came

on, Madame Guise, to say Bon jour, thinking you were alone."

"It is Bon soir, I think," returned Madame, with a pleasant laugh, as

she rang for lights. "Will you take a chair?"

"Thank you no," he replied, putting the sketch-book into the

portfolio. "I will take my departure instead, and call again

to-morrow at a more seasonable hour. Goodnight to you Miss Ethel."

Ethel put her hand into his and returned the goodnight in a low tone.

When he should have left, the sunshine of the evening would have left

with him. Madame Guise, as she often did, stepped across the threshold

to walk to the gate with him.

"Did you want anything particular with me, George?" she asked in

French, waiting until they were beyond hearing--lest the walls of the

house should possess ears.

"Only to tell you that I had a letter from Emma this morning. I should

not have come up so late but for believing the family were all out."

"What does Emma say?"

"Not much. Emma never does, you know. She sends some kind messages to

you and a kiss to Marie: and she asks how much longer I mean to linger

at Greylands. That is about all."

"But does she ask nothing about Anthony?"

"She asks in a general way, whether we know more yet. Which of course

we do not."

"Have you made anything out of that young Dance, George?"

"Nothing. There's nothing to be made out of him. Except that I feel

convinced the tale he tells is not all true. I was in the Friar's

Keep to-night----"

"And saw nothing?" she eagerly interrupted.

"And saw nothing. It was dark and silent and lonely as usual.

Sometimes I ask myself what it is that I can reasonably expect to

see."

"Yes, I know; you have thought that from the first," she said

reproachfully. "My brain is at work always I have no rest by night

or by day."

"Which is very bad for you, Charlotte: it is wearing you out. This

living, restless anxiety will not bring elucidation any the surer or

quicker."

"Not bring it! But it will. Will my prayers and my anguish not be

heard, think you? God is good."

They parted with the last words. Charlotte Guise, leaning on the

side-gate as she looked after him, raised her eyes to the blue canopy

of heaven: and there and then, in her simple faith, poured forth a few

words of prayer.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CALLING IN THE BLACKSMITH.

Things were swiftly coming to a crisis in Miss Hallet's house, though

that lady was very far from suspecting it. Time had again gone on

since the last chapter, and Walter Dance was about again.

After the evening that witnessed Miss Hallet's fright at the vision of

the Grey Friar, she had been very ill. Whether it was the terror

itself, or her mortification at having betrayed it, or the fall in the

road that affected her, certain it was that she had a somewhat long

illness, and was attended by Mr. Parker. No one could be more

attentive to her than Jane was; and Miss Hallet was willing to forget

that the girl had given cause for complaint. But Miss Hallet found,

now that she was well, that the same cause was still in existence: at

all times of unseasonably late hours Jane would be abroad. Scarcely an

evening passed but Jane would make an excuse to go out; or go out

without excuse if none could be framed. She had taken lately to go

more to Stilborough, often without assigning any reason for it. The

hour at which she would come in was uncertain; sometimes it was after

ten--a very unhallowed hour in the sober estimation of her aunt. One

night she had stayed out till one o'clock in the morning, sending Miss

Hallet into a perfect fever of suspense and anger. She ran in, panting

with the haste she had made up the cliff, and she looked worn,

haggard, almost wild. Miss Hallet attacked her with some harsh words:

Jane responded by a burst of tears, and declared in a tone of truth

that her aunt could scarcely disbelieve, that she had only been

"looking at the sea" and looking at it alone.

From that evening, Miss Hallet had taken to watch Jane as a subject

of curiosity. Jane was getting nervous. More than once when Miss

Hallet had gone upstairs and surprised, unintentionally, Jane in her

bedroom--for that lady, since her illness, had walked about in

perfectly noiseless list shoes, for comfort only, not to come upon

people unawares--she had found Jane standing over a certain open

drawer. Jane would shut it hastily and lock it with shaking fingers,

and sometimes shake all over besides. Jane had never been nervous in

her life, mentally reasoned Miss Hallet: why should she be becoming so

now? Her eyes had habitually a strangely-sad look in them, something

like those of a hunted hare; her face was worn and thin. The sudden

appearance of anyone at the door or window would make Jane start and

turn pale: she could eat nothing, and would often be so absorbed in

thought as to give contrary answers. "What is the time by the clock,

Jane?" her aunt might say, for instance: "No, aunt, I forgot it,"

might be the answer. Altogether, taking one thing with another, Miss

Hallet came to the conclusion that there was some mystery about Jane,

just as certain other personages of our story decided there was mystery

in the Friar's Keep.

The matter troubled Miss Hallet. She knew not what to do, to whom to

speak, or of whom to ask advice. Speaking to Jane herself went for

nothing: for the girl invariably denied, with all the unconcern she

could put on, that anything was amiss or that she was different from

what she used to be. It was now that Miss Hallet felt her isolated

position, and the reserve with which she had treated the village.

Her own illness had left her somewhat less strong-minded than before,

or she would never have spoken of it. One day, however, when Mrs. Bent

came up to pay a social visit, and Jane had gone down the cliff on

some necessary errand, Miss Hallet, who had been "tried" that morning

by Jane's having an hysterical fit, condescended to speak of Harry

Castlemaine in connection with her niece, and to ask Mrs. Bent whether

she ever saw them together now.

"Pretty nearly every other evening," was the plain and most unwelcome

answer.

Miss Hallet coughed, to cover a groan of censure. "Where do they walk

to?" she asked.

"Mostly under the high cliff towards the Limpets. It's lonely there at

night--nobody to be met with, ever."

"Do you walk there--that you should see them?" asked keen Miss

Hallet.

"To tell you the truth, I have gone there on purpose to see," was the

landlady's unblushing answer. "I don't approve of it. It's very

foolish of Jane."

"Foolish; yes, very: but Jane would never behave lightly!" returned

Miss Hallet, a blush of resentment on her thin cheeks.

"I don't say she would: Jane ought to have better sense than that. But

it is pretty nigh as bad to give rise to talk," added candid Mrs. Bent:

"many a good name has been tarnished without worse cause. It's not

nice news, either, to be carried up to Greylands' Rest."

"Is it carried there, Mrs. Bent?"

"Net yet, that I know of. But it will be one of these days. I should

put a summary stop to it, Miss Hallet."

"Yes, yes," said the unfortunate lady, smoothing her mittened hands

together nervously, as she inwardly wondered how that was to be done,

with Jane in her present temper. And, perplexed with her many

difficulties, she began enlarging upon Jane's new and strange moods,

even mentioning the locked drawer she had surprised Jane at, and

openly wondering what she kept in it.