'Henry,' said she, 'I know you will think me very foolish, but I have
not yet got over the fright that shriek gave me, the shriek we both
heard the moment before the landslip. That shriek was not a noise
made by the rending of trees, Henry. No, no; we both know better than
that, Henry.'
I gave a start; for, try as I would, I had not really succeeded in
persuading myself that what I had heard was anything but a human
voice in terror or in pain.
'What do you think the noise was, then?' said I.
'I don't know; but I know what I felt as it came shuddering along the
sand, and then went wailing over the sea.'
'What did you feel, Winnie?'
'My heart stood still, for it seemed to me to be the call from the
grave.'
'The call from the grave! and pray what is that? I feel how sadly my
education has been neglected.'
'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family
is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a
call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his
hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I
felt sure it was a call from the grave, and I knelt on the sands and
prayed. Henry, Henry, don't go in the church to-night.'
That Winifred's words affected me profoundly I need not say. The
shriek, whatever it was, had been responded to by her soul and by
mine in the same mysterious way. But the important thing to do was to
prevent her from imagining that her superstitious terrors had
affected me.
'Really, Winnie,' I said, 'this double-voiced shriek of yours, which
is at once the shriek of the Welshman at the bottom of the swollen
falls and the Celtic call from the grave, is the most dramatic shriek
I ever heard of. It would make its fortune on the stage. But with all
its power of being the shriek of two different people at once, it
must not prevent my going into the church to do my duty; so we had
better part here at this very spot. You go up the cliffs by Needle
Point, and _I_ will take Flinty Point gangway.'
'But why not ascend the cliffs together?' said Winifred.
'Why, the prying coastguard might be passing, and might wonder to
see us in the churchyard on the night of my father's funeral (he
might take us for two ghosts in love, you know). However, we need not
part just yet. We can walk on a little farther into the cove before
our paths diverge.'
Winifred made no demur, though she looked puzzled, as we were then
much nearer to the gangway I had selected for myself than to the
gangway I had allotted to her.