'And yet, Winnie, I have brought you here to this boulder to die!'
But I could not say it--my tongue rebelled and would not say it.
Winifred was so full of health and enjoyment of life that, courageous
as she was. I felt that the prospect of certain and imminent death
must appal her; and to see the look of terror break over her face
confronting death was what I could not bear. And yet the thing must
be said. But at this very moment, when my perplexity seemed direst, a
blessed thought came to me--a subterfuge holier than truth. I knew
the Cymric superstition about 'the call from the grave,' for had not
she herself just told me of it?
'I will turn Superstition, accursed Superstition itself, to account,'
I muttered. 'I will pretend that I am enmeshed in a web of Fate, and
doomed to die here myself. Then, if I know my Winifred, she will, of
her own free mind, die with me.'
'Winnie,' I said, 'I have to tell you something that I know must
distress you sorely on my account--something that must wring your
heart, dear, and yet it must be told.'
She turned her head sharply round with a look of alarm that almost
silenced me, so pathetic was it. On that courageous face I had not
seen alarm before, and this was alarm for evil coming to me. It shook
my heart--it shook my heart so that I could not speak.
'I felt,' said she, 'that something awful had happened. And it
affects yourself, Henry?'
'It affects myself.'
'And very deeply?'
'Very deeply, Winnie.'
Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment
scroll, I said, 'It has relation to these.'
'_That_ I felt,' said she; 'how could it be otherwise? Oh, the
miscreant! I curse him; I curse him!'
'Winifred,' I said, 'between me and this casket, and the cross
mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an
amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been
disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is
but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable
calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin
and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is
demanded.'
'Henry, you terrify me to death. What is the sacrifice? Oh God! Oh
God!'
'My father's son must die, Winnie.'
She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, 'I
fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must
even take the calamity and bear it; for I don't mean my Henry to die,
let me assure both families of _that_.'
'Ah! but, Winnie, I am under a solemn oath and pledge to bear this
penalty; and we part to-night, That shriek which so appalled you--'
'Well, well, the shriek?' said she, in a frenzy of impatience.