J. S. Le Fanu, Uncle Silas (1864) - Chaps. LXI-LXV

Chapter LXI: Our Bed-Chamber
I had passed a miserable night, and, indeed, for many nights had not had my due proportion of sleep. Still I sometimes fancy that I may have swallowed something in my tea that helped to make me so irresistibly drowsy. It was a very dark night - no moon, and the stars soon hid by the gathering clouds. Madame sat silent, and ruminating in her place, with her rugs about her. I, in my corner similarly enveloped, tried to keep awake. Madame plainly thought I was asleep already, for she stole a leather flask from her pocket, and applied it to her lips, causing an aroma of brandy.
 But it was vain struggling against the influence that was stealing over me, and I was soon in a profound and dreamless slumber.
 Madame awoke me at last, in a huge fuss. She had got out all our things and hurried them away to a close carriage which was awaiting us. It was still dark and starless. We got along the platform, I half asleep, the porter carrying our rugs, by the glare of a pair of gas-jets in the wall, and out by a small door at the end.
 I remember that Madame, contrary to her wont, gave the man some money. By the puzzling light of the carriage-lamps we got in and took our seats.
 ‘Go on,’ screamed Madame, and drew up the window with a great chuck; and we were enclosed in darkness and silence, the most favourable conditions for thought.
 My sleep had not restored me as it might; I felt feverish, fatigued, and still very drowsy, though unable to sleep as I had done.
 I dozed by fits and starts, and lay awake, or half-awake, sometimes, not thinking but in a way imagining what kind of a place Dover would be; but too tired and listless to ask Madame any questions, and merely seeing the hedges, grey in the lamplight, glide backward into darkness, as I leaned back.
 We turned off the main road, at right angles, and drew up.
 ‘Get down and poosh it, it is open,’ screamed Madame from the window.
 A gate, I suppose, was thus passed; for when we resumed our brisk trot, Madame bawled across the carriage -
 ‘We are now in the ‘otel grounds.’
 And so all again was darkness and silence, and I fell into another doze, from which, on waking, I found that we had come to a standstill, and Madame was standing on the low step of an open door, paying the driver. She, herself, pulled her box and the bag in. I was too tired to care what had become of the rest of our luggage.
 I descended, glancing to the right and left, but there was nothing visible but a patch of light from the lamps on a paved ground and on the wall.
 We stepped into the hall or vestibule, and Madame shut the door, and I thought I heard the key turn in it. We were in total darkness.
 ‘Where are the lights, Madame - where are the people?’ I asked, more awake than I had been.
 ‘’Tis pass three o’clock, cheaile, bote there is always light here.’ She was groping at the side; and in a moment more lighted a lucifer match, and so a bedroom candle.
 We were in a flagged lobby, under an archway at the right, and at the left of which opened long flagged passages, lost in darkness; a winding stair, barely wide enough to admit Madame, dragging her box, led upward under a doorway, in a corner at the right.
 ‘Come, dear cheaile, take your bag; don’t mind the rugs, they are safe enough.’
 ‘But where are we to go? There is no one!’ I said, looking round in wonder. It certainly was a strange reception at an hotel.
 ‘Never mind, my dear cheaile. They know me here, and I have always the same room ready when I write for it. Follow me quaitely.’
 So she mounted, carrying the candle. The stair was steep, and the march long. We halted at the second landing, and entered a gaunt, grimy passage. All the way up we had not heard a single sound of life, nor seen a human being, nor so much as passed a gaslight.
 ‘Viola! here ’tis, my dear old room. Enter, dearest Maud.’
 And so I did. The room was large and lofty, but shabby and dismal. There was a tall four-post bed, with its foot beside the window, hung with dark-green curtains, of some plush or velvet texture, that looked like a dusty pall. The remaining furniture was scant and old, and a ravelled square of threadbare carpet covered a patch of floor at the bedside. The room was grim and large, and had a cold, vault-like atmosphere, as if long uninhabited; but there were cinders in the grate and under it. The imperfect light of our mutton-fat candle made all this look still more comfortless.
 Madame placed the candle on the chimneypiece, locked the door, and put the key in her pocket.
 ‘I always do so in ‘otel’ said she, with a wink at me.
 And, then with a long ‘ha!’ expressive of fatigue and relief, she threw herself into a chair.
 ‘So ‘ere we are at last!’ said she; ‘I’m glad. There’s your bed, Maud. Mine is in the dressing-room.’
 She took the candle, and I went in with her. A shabby press bed, a chair, and table were all its furniture; it was rather a closet than a dressing-room, and had no door except that through which we had entered. So we returned, and very tired, wondering, I sat down on the side of my bed and yawned.
 ‘I hope they will call us in time for the packet,’ I said.
 ‘Oh yes, they never fail,’ she answered, looking steadfastly on her box, which she was diligently uncording.
 Uninviting as was my bed, I was longing to lie down in it; and having made those ablutions which our journey rendered necessary, I at length lay down, having first religiously stuck my talismanic pin, with the head of sealing-wax, into the bolster.
 Nothing escaped the restless eye of Madame.
 ‘Wat is that, dear cheaile?’ she enquired, drawing near and scrutinising the head of the gipsy charm, which showed like a little ladybird newly lighted on the sheet.
 ‘Nothing - a charm - folly. Pray, Madame, allow me to go to sleep.’
 So, with another look and a little twiddle between her finger and thumb, she seemed satisfied; but, unhappily for me, she did not seem at all sleepy. She busied herself in unpacking and displaying over the back of the chair a whole series of London purchases - silk dresses, a shawl, a sort of lace demi-coiffure then in vogue, and a variety of other articles.
 The vainest and most slammakin of women - the merest slut at home, a milliner’s lay figure out of doors - she had one square foot of looking-glass upon the chimneypiece, and therein tried effects, and conjured up grotesque simpers upon her sinister and weary face.
 I knew that the sure way to prolong this worry was to express my uneasiness under it, so I bore it as quietly as I could; and at last fell fast asleep with the gaunt image of Madame, with a festoon of grey silk with a cerise stripe, pinched up in her finger and thumb, and smiling over her shoulder across it into the little shaving-glass that stood on the chimney.
 I awoke suddenly in the morning, and sat up in my bed, having for a moment forgotten all about our travelling. A moment more, however, brought all back again.
 ‘Are we in time, Madame?’
 ‘For the packet?’ she enquired, with one of her charming smiles, and cutting a caper on the floor. ‘To be sure; you don’t suppose they would forget. We have two hours yet to wait.’
 ‘Can we see the sea from the window?’
 ‘No, dearest cheaile; you will see’t time enough.
 ‘I’d like to get up,’ I said.
 ‘Time enough, my dear Maud; you are fatigued; are you sure you feel quite well?’
 ‘Well enough to get up; I should be better, I think, out of bed.’
 ‘There is no hurry, you know; you need not even go by the next packet. Your uncle, he tell me, I may use my discretion.’
 ‘Is there any water?’
 ‘They will bring some.’
 ‘Please, Madame, ring the bell.’
 She pulled it with alacrity. I afterwards learnt that it did not ring.
 ‘What has become of my gipsy pin?’ I demanded, with an unaccountable sinking of the heart.
 ‘Oh! the little pin with the red top? maybe it ‘as fall on the ground; we weel find when you get up.’
 I suspected that she had taken it merely to spite me. It would have been quite the thing she would have liked. I cannot describe to you how the loss of this little ‘charm’ depressed and excited me. I searched the bed; I turned over all the bed-clothes; I searched in and outside; at last I gave up.
 ‘How odious!’ I cried; ‘somebody has stolen it merely to vex me.’
 And, like a fool as I was, I threw myself on my face on the bed and wept, partly in anger, partly in dismay.
 After a time, however, this blew over. I had a hope of recovering it. If Madame had stolen it, it would turn up yet. But in the meantime its disappearance troubled me like an omen.
 ‘I am afraid, my dear cheaile, you are not very well. It is really very odd you should make such fuss about a pin! Nobody would believe! Do you not theenk it would be a good plan to take a your breakfast in your bed?
 She continued to urge this point for some time. At last, however, having by this time quite recovered my self-command, and resolved to preserve ostensibly fair terms with Madame, who could contribute so essentially to make me wretched during the rest of my journey, and possibly to prejudice me very seriously on my arrival, I said quietly -
 ‘Well, Madame, I know it is very silly; but I had kept that foolish little pin so long and so carefully, that I had grown quite fond of it; but I suppose it is lost, and I must content myself, though I cannot laugh as you do. So I will get up now, and dress.’
 ‘I think you will do well to get all the repose you can,’ answered Madame; ‘but as you please,’ she added, observing that I was getting up.
 So soon as I had got some of my things on, I said -
 ‘Is there a pretty view from the window?’
 ‘No,’ said Madame.
 I looked out and saw a dreary quadrangle of cut stone, in one side of which my window was placed. As I looked a dream rose up before me.
 ‘This hotel,’ I said, in a puzzled way. ‘Is it a hotel? Why this is just like - it is the inner court of Bartram-Haugh!’
 Madame clapped her large hands together, made a fantastic chassé on the floor, burst into a great nasal laugh like the scream of a parrot, and then said -
 ‘Well, dearest Maud, is not clever trick?’
 I was so utterly confounded that I could only stare about me in stupid silence, a spectacle which renewed Madame’s peals of laughter.
 ‘We are at Bartram-Haugh!’ I repeated, in utter consternation. ‘How was this done?’
 I had no reply but shrieks of laughter, and one of those Walpurgis dances in which she excelled.
 ‘It is a mistake - is it? What is it?’
 ‘All a mistake, of course. Bartram-Haugh, it is so like Dover, as all philosophers know.’
 I sat down in total silence, looking out into the deep and dark enclosure, and trying to comprehend the reality and the meaning of all this.
 ‘Well, Madame, I suppose you will be able to satisfy my uncle of your fidelity and intelligence. But to me it seems that his money has been ill-spent, and his directions anything but well observed.’
 ‘Ah, ha! Never mind; I think he will forgive me,’ laughed Madame.
 Her tone frightened me. I began to think, with a vague but overpowering sense of danger, that she had acted under the Machiavellian directions of her superior.
 ‘You have brought me back, then, by my uncle’s orders?’
 ‘Did I say so?’
 ‘No; but what you have said can have no other meaning, though I can’t believe it. And why have I been brought here? What is the object of all this duplicity and trick. I will know. It is not possible that my uncle, a gentleman and a kinsman, can be privy to so disreputable a manouvre.’
 ‘First you will eat your breakfast, dear Maud; next you can tell your story to your uncle, Monsieur Ruthyn; and then you shall hear what he thinks of my so terrible misconduct. What nonsense, cheaile! Can you not think how many things may ‘appen to change a your uncle’s plans? Is he not in danger to be arrest? Bah! You are cheaile still; you cannot have intelligence more than a cheaile. Dress yourself, and I will order breakfast.’
 I could not comprehend the strategy which had been practised on me. Why had I been so shamelessly deceived? If it were decided that I should remain here, for what imaginable reason had I been sent so far on my journey to France? Why had I been conveyed back with such mystery? Why was I removed to this uncomfortable and desolate room, on the same floor with the apartment in which Charke had met his death, and with no window commanding the front of the house, and no view but the deep and weed-choked court, that looked like a deserted churchyard in a city?
 ‘I suppose I may go to my own room?’ I said.
 ‘Not to-day, my dear cheaile, for it was all disarrange when we go ’way; ’twill be ready again in two three days.’
 ‘Where is Mary Quince?’ I asked.
 ‘Mary Quince! - she has follow us to France,’ said Madame, making what in Ireland they call a bull.
 ‘They are not sure where they will go or what will do for day or two more. I will go and get breakfast. Adieu for a moment.’
 Madame was out of the door as she said this, and I thought I heard the key turn in the lock.

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Chapter LXII: A Well-Known Face Looks In
 You who have never experienced it can have no idea how angry and frightened you become under the sinister insult of being locked into a room, as on trying the door I found I was.
 The key was in the lock; I could see it through the hole. I called after Madame, I shook at the solid oak-door, beat upon it with my hands, kicked it - but all to no purpose.
 I rushed into the next room, forgetting - if indeed I had observed it, that there was no door from it upon the gallery. I turned round in an angry and dismayed perplexity, and, like prisoners in romances, examined the windows.
 I was shocked and affrighted on discovering in reality what they occasionally find - a series of iron bars crossing the window! They were firmly secured in the oak woodwork of the window-frame, and each window was, besides, so compactly screwed down that it could not open. This bedroom was converted into a prison. A momentary hope flashed on me - perhaps all the windows were secured alike! But it was no such thing: these gaol-like precautions were confined to the windows to which I had access.
 For a few minutes I felt quite distracted; but I bethought me that I must now, if ever, control my terrors and exert whatever faculties I possessed.
 I stood upon a chair and examined the oak-work. I thought I detected marks of new chiselling here and there. The screws, too, looked new; and they and the scars on the woodwork were freshly smeared over with some coloured stuff by way of disguise.
 While I was making these observations, I heard the key stealthily stirred. I suspect that Madame wished to surprise me. Her approaching step, indeed, was seldom audible; she had the soft tread of the feline tribe.
 I was standing in the centre of the room confronting her when she entered.
 ‘Why did you lock the door, Madame?’ I demanded.
 She slipped in suddenly with an insidious smirk, and locked the door hastily.
 ‘Hish!’ whispered Madame, raising her broad palm; and then screwing in her cheeks, she made an ogle over her shoulder in the direction of the passage.
 ‘Hish! be quiate, cheaile, weel you, and I weel tale you everything presently.’
 She paused, with her ear laid to the door.
 ‘Now I can speak, ma chère; I weel tale a you there is bailiff in the house, two, three, four soche impertinent fallows! They have another as bad as themselve to make a leest of the furniture: we most keep them out of these rooms, dear Maud.’
 ‘You left the key in the door on the outside,’ I retorted; ‘that was not to keep them out, but me in, Madame.’
 ‘Deed I leave the key in the door?’ ejaculated Madame, with both hands raised, and such a genuine look of consternation as for a moment shook me.
 It was the nature of this woman’s deceptions that they often puzzled though they seldom convinced me.
 ‘I re-ally think, Maud, all those so frequent changes and excite-ments they weel overturn my poor head.’
 ‘And the windows are secured with iron bars - what are they for?’ I whispered sternly, pointing with my finger at these grim securities.
 ‘That is for more a than forty years, when Sir Phileep Aylmer was to reside here, and had this room for his children’s nursery, and was afraid they should fall out.’
 ‘But if you look you will find these bars have been put here very recently: the screws and marks are quite new.’
 ‘Eendeed!’ ejaculated Madame, with prolonged emphasis, in precisely the same consternation. ‘Why, my dear, they told a me down stair what I have tell a you, when I ask the reason! Late a me see.’
 And Madame mounted on a chair, and made her scrutiny with much curiosity, but could not agree with me as to the very recent date of the carpentry.
 There is nothing, I think, so exasperating as that sort of falsehood which affects not to see what is quite palpable.
 ‘Do you mean to say, Madame, that you really think those chisellings and screws are forty years old?’
 ‘How can I tell, cheaile? What does signify whether it is forty or only fourteen years? Bah! we av other theeng to theenk about. Those villain men! I am glad to see bar and bolt, and lock and key, at least, to our room, to keep soche faylows out!’
 At that moment a knock came to the door, and Madame’s nasal ‘in moment’ answered promptly, and she opened the door, stealthily popping out her head.
 ‘Oh, that is all right; go you long, no ting more, go way.’
 ‘Who’s there?’ I cried.
 ‘Hold a your tongue,’ said Madame imperiously to the visitor, whose voice I fancied I recognised - ‘go way.’
 Out slipped Madame again, locking the door; but this time she returned immediately, bearing a tray with breakfast.
 I think she fancied that I would perhaps attempt to break away and escape; but I had no such thought at that moment. She hastily set down the tray on the floor at the threshold, locking the door as before.
 My share of breakfast was a little tea; but Madame’s digestion was seldom disturbed by her sympathies, and she ate voraciously. During this process there was a silence unusual in her company; but when her meal was ended she proposed a reconnaissance, professing much uncertainty as to whether my Uncle had been arrested or not.
 ‘And in case the poor old gentleman be poot in what you call stone jug, where are we to go my dear Maud - to Knowl or to Elverston? You must direct.’
 And so she disappeared, turning the key in the door as before. It was an old custom of hers, locking herself in her room, and leaving the key in the lock; and the habit prevailed, for she left it there again.
 With a heavy heart I completed my simple toilet, wondering all the while how much of Madame’s story might be false and how much, if any, true. Then I looked out upon the dingy courtyard below, in its deep damp shadow, and thought, ‘How could an assassin have scaled that height in safety, and entered so noiselessly as not to awaken the slumbering gamester?’ Then there were the iron bars across my window. What a fool had I been to object to that security!
 I was labouring hard to reassure myself, and keep all ghastly suspicions at arm’s length. But I wished that my room had been to the front of the house, with some view less dismal.
 Lost in these ruminations of fear, as I stood at the window I was startled by the sound of a sharp tread on the lobby, and by the key turning in the lock of my door.
 In a panic I sprang back into the corner, and stood with my eyes fixed upon the door. It opened a little, and the black head of Meg Hawkes was introduced.
 ‘Oh, Meg!’ I cried; ‘thank God!’
 ‘I guessed ’twas you, Miss Maud. I am feared, Miss.’
 The miller’s daughter was pale, and her eyes, I thought, were red and swollen.
 ‘Oh, Meg! for God’s sake, what is it all?’
 ‘I darn’t come in. The old un’s gone down, and locked the cross-door, and left me to watch. They think I care nout about ye, no more nor themselves. I donna know all, but summat more nor her. They tell her nout, she’s so gi’n to drink; they say she’s not safe, an’ awful quarrelsome. I hear a deal when fayther and Master Dudley be a-talkin’ in the mill. They think, comin’ in an’ out, I don’t mind; but I put one think an’ t’other together. An’ don’t ye eat nor drink nout here, Miss; hide away this; it’s black enough, but wholesome anyhow!’ and she slipt a piece of a coarse loaf from under her apron. ‘Hide it mind. Drink nout but the water in the jug there - it’s clean spring.’
 ‘Oh, Meg! Oh, Meg! I know what you mean,’ said I, faintly.
 ‘Ay, Miss, I’m feared they’ll try it; they’ll try to make away wi’ ye somehow. I’m goin’ to your friends arter dark; I darn’t try it no sooner. I’ll git awa to Ellerston, to your lady-cousin, and I’ll bring ‘em back wi’ me in a rin; so keep a good hairt, lass. Meg Hawkes will stan’ to ye. Ye were better to me than fayther and mother, and a’;’ and she clasped me round the waist, and buried her head in my dress; ‘an I’ll gie my life for ye, darling, and if they hurt ye I’ll kill myself.’
 She recovered her sterner mood quickly -
 ‘Not a word, lass,’ she said, in her old tone. ‘Don’t ye try to git away - they’ll kill ye - ye can’t do’t. Leave a’ to me. It won’t be, whatever it is, till two or three o’clock in the morning. I’ll ha’e them a’ here long afore; so keep a brave heart - there’s a darling.’
 I suppose she heard, or fancied she heard, a step approaching, for she said -
 ‘Hish!’
 Her pale wild face vanished, the door shut quickly and softly, and the key turned again in the lock.
 Meg, in her rude way, had spoken softly - almost under her breath; but no prophecy shrieked by the Pythoness ever thundered so madly in the ears of the hearer. I dare say that Meg fancied I was marvellously little moved by her words. I felt my gaze grow intense, and my flesh and bones literally freeze. She did not know that every word she spoke seemed to burst like a blaze in my brain. She had delivered her frightful warning, and told her story coarsely and bluntly, which, in effect, means distinctly and concisely; and, I dare say, the announcement so made, like a quick bold incision in surgery, was more tolerable than the slow imperfect mangling, which falters and recedes and equivocates with torture. Madame was long away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful situation. I was stupid - the imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as we sometimes see horrors - heads cut off and houses burnt - in a dream, and without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to the side of my head and saying -
 ‘Oh, it won’t be - it won’t be - Oh no! - never! - it could not be!’ And in this stunned state Madame found me on her return.
 But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The ‘horror of great darkness’ is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights. There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found it - agonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the ordeal.
 Madame locked the door, and amused herself with her own business, without minding me, humming little nasal snatches of French airs, as she smirked on her silken purchases displayed in the daylight. Suddenly it struck me that it was very dark, considering how early it was. I looked at my watch; it seemed to me a great effort of concentration to understand it. Four o’clock, it said. Four o’clock! It would be dark at five - night in one hour!
 ‘Madame, what o’clock is it? Is it evening?’ I cried with my hand to my forehead, like a person puzzled.
 ‘Two three minutes past four. It had five minutes to four when I came upstairs,’ answered she, without interrupting her examination of a piece of darned lace which she was holding close to her eyes at the window.
 ‘Oh, Madame! Madame! I’m frightened,’ cried I, with a wild and piteous voice, grasping her arm, and looking up, as shipwrecked people may their last to heaven, into her inexorable eyes. Madame looked frightened too, I thought, as she stared into my face. At last she said, rather angrily, and shaking her arm loose -
 ‘What you mean, cheaile?’
 ‘Oh save me, Madame! - oh save me! - oh save me, Madame!’ I pleaded, with the wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos.
 ‘Save a you, indeed! Save! What niaiserie!’
 ‘Oh, Madame! Oh, dear Madame! for God’s sake, only get me away - get me from this, and I’ll do everything you ask me all my life - I will - indeed, Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! save me!’
 I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony.
 ‘And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger?’ demanded Madame, looking down on me with a black and witchlike stare.
 ‘I am, Madame - I am - in great danger! Oh, Madame, think of me - take pity on me! I have none to help me - there is no one but God and you!’
 Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress reading futurity in my face.
 ‘Well, maybe you are - how can I tell? Maybe your uncle is mad - maybe you are mad. You have been my enemy always - why should I care?’
 Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death.
 ‘I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little rogue - petite traîtresse! Reflect, if you can, how you ‘av always treat Madame. You ‘av attempt to ruin me - you conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy me - and you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to me - you ‘ad no mercy for me - you join to hunt me away from your house like wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? Bah!’
 This terrific ‘Bah!’ with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like a clap of thunder.
 ‘I say you are mad, petite insolente, to suppose I should care for you more than the poor hare it will care for the hound - more than the bird who has escape will love the oiseleur. I do not care - I ought not care. It is your turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely.’

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Chapter LXIII:  Spiced Claret
 I did not lie down; but I despaired. I walked round and round the room, wringing my hands in utter distraction. I threw myself at the bedside on my knees. I could not pray; I could only shiver and moan, with hands clasped, and eyes of horror turned up to heaven. I think Madame was, in her malignant way, perplexed. That some evil was intended me I am sure she was persuaded; but I dare say Meg Hawkes had said rightly in telling me that she was not fully in their secrets.
 The first paroxysm of despair subsided into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent: there is a sudden curve there, two great ash-trees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending towards Elverston. It was constantly the same picture - the same motion without progress - the same dreadful suspense and impatience.
 I was now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld Madame darkly eyeing first one then another point of the chamber, evidently puzzling over some problem, and in one of her most savage moods - sometimes muttering to herself, sometimes protruding, and sometimes screwing up her great mouth.
 She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the glow of her face, and the peculiar fragrance that surrounded her, that showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative.
 I had not moved since she left my room.
 She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can only describe as her wild-beast stare.
 ‘You are a very secrete family, you Ruthyns - you are so coning. I hate the coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away to-night. He shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que je vis.’
 Madame’s words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Meg’s journey was already frustrated: she was not to reach Elverston in time.
 Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for me.
 It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with a dreadful icy shivering.
 I was listening for signals of deliverance. At ever distant sound, half stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible and exaggerated distinctness - ‘Oh Meg! - Oh cousin Monica! - Oh come! Oh Heaven, have mercy! - Lord, have mercy!’ I thought I heard a roaring and jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Uncle Silas’s room. It might be the tipsy violence of Madame. It might - merciful Heaven! - be the arrival of friends. I started to my feet; I listened, quivering with attention. Was it in my brain? - was it real? I was at the door, and it seemed to open of itself. Madame had forgotten to lock it; she was losing her head a little by this time. The key stood in the gallery door beyond; it too, was open. I fled wildly. There was a subsiding sound of voices in my uncle’s room. I was, I know not how, on the lobby at the great stair-head outside my uncle’s apartment. My hand was on the banisters, my foot on the first step, when below me and against the faint light that glimmered through the great window on the landing I saw a bulky human form ascending, and a voice said ‘Hush!’ I staggered back, and at that instant fancied, with a thrill of conviction, I heard Lady Knollys’s voice in Uncle Silas’ room.
 I don’t know how I entered the room; I was there like a ghost. I was frightened at my own state.
 Lady Knollys was not there - no one but Madame and my guardian.
 I can never forget the look that Uncle Silas fixed on me as he cowered, seemingly as appalled as I.
 I think I must have looked like a phantom newly risen from the grave.
 ‘What’s that? - where do you come from?’ whispered he.
 ‘Death! death!’ was my whispered answer, as I froze with terror where I stood.
 ‘What does she mean? - what does all this mean?’ said Uncle Silas, recovering wonderfully, and turning with a withering sneer on Madame. ‘Do you think it right to disobey my plain directions, and let her run about the house at this hour?’
 ‘Death! death! Oh, pray to God for you and me!’ I whispered in the same dreadful tones.
 My uncle stared strangely at me again; and after several horrible seconds, in which he seemed to have recovered himself, he said, sternly and coolly -
 ‘You give too much place to your imagination, niece. Your spirits are in an odd state - you ought to have advice.’
 ‘Oh, uncle, pity me! Oh, uncle, you are good! you’re kind; you’re kind when you think. You could not - you could not - could not! Oh, think of your brother that was always so good to you! He sees me here. He sees us both. Oh, save me, uncle - save me! - and I’ll give up everything to you. I’ll pray to God to bless you - I’ll never forget your goodness and mercy. But don’t keep me in doubt. If I’m to go, oh, for God’s sake, shoot me now!’
 ‘You were always odd, niece; I begin to fear you are insane,’ he replied, in the same stern icy tone.
 ‘Oh, uncle - oh! - am I? Am I mad?’
 ‘I hope not; but you’ll conduct yourself like a sane person if you wish to enjoy the privileges of one.’
 Then, with his finger pointing at me, he turned to Madame, and said, in a tone of suppressed ferocity -
 ‘What’s the meaning of this? - why is she here?’
 Madame was gabbling volubly, but to me it was only a shrilly noise. My whole soul was concentrated in my uncle, the arbiter of my life, before whom I stood in the wildest agony of supplication.
 That night was dreadful. The people I saw dizzily, made of smoke or shining vapour, smiling or frowning, I could have passed my hand through them. They were evil spirits.
 ‘There’s no ill intended you; by - - there’s none,’ said my uncle, for the first time violently agitated. ‘Madame told you why we’ve changed your room. You told her about the bailiffs, did not you? ‘with a stamp of fury he demanded of Madame, whose nasal roullades of talk were running on like a accompaniment all the time. She had told me indeed only a few hours since, and now it sounded to me like the echo of something heard a month ago or more.
 ‘You can’t go about the house, d - n it, with bailiffs in occupation. There now - there’s the whole thing. Get to your room, Maud, and don’t vex me. There’s a good girl.’
 He was trying to smile as he spoke these last words, and, with quavering soft tones, to quiet me; but the old scowl was there, the smile was corpse-like and contorted, and the softness of his tones was more dreadful than another man’s ferocity.
 ‘There, Madame, she’ll go quite gently, and you can call if you want help. Don’t let it happen again.’
 ‘Come, Maud,’ said Madame, encircling but not hurting my arm with her grip; ‘let us go, my friend.’
 I did go, you will wonder, as well you may - as you may wonder at the docility with which strong men walk through the press-room to the drop, and thank the people of the prison for their civility when they bid them good-bye, and facilitate the fixing of the rope and adjusting of the cap. Have you never wondered that they don’t make a last battle for life with the unscrupulous energy of terror, instead of surrendering it so gently in cold blood, on a silent calculation, the arithmetic of despair?
 I went upstairs with Madame like a somnambulist. I rather quickened my step as I drew near my room. I went in, and stood a phantom at the window, looking into the dark quadrange. A thin glimmering crescent hung in the frosty sky, and all heaven was strewn with stars. Over the steep roof at the other side spread on the dark azure of the night this glorious blazonry of the unfathomable Creator. To me a dreadful scroll - inexorable eyes - the cloud of cruel witnesses looking down in freezing brightness on my prayers and agonies.
 I turned about and sat down, leaning my head upon my arms. Then suddenly I sat up, as for the first time the picture of Uncle Silas’s littered room, and the travelling bags and black boxes plied on the floor by his table - the desk, hat-case, umbrella, coats, rugs, and mufflers, all ready for a journey - reached my brain and suggested thought. The mise en scène had remained in every detail fixed upon my retina; and how I wondered - ‘When is he going - how soon? Is he going to carry me away and place me in a madhouse?’
 ‘Am I - am I mad?’ I began to think. ‘Is this all a dream, or is it real?’
 I remembered how a thin polite gentleman, with a tall grizzled head and a black velvet waistcoat, came into the carriage on our journey, and said a few words to me; how Madame whispered him something, and he murmured ‘Oh!’ very gently, with raised eyebrows, and a glance at me, and thenceforward spoke no more to me, only to Madame, and at the next station carried his hat and other travelling chattels into another carriage. Had she told him I was mad?
 These horrid bars! Madame always with me! The direful hints that dropt from my uncle! My own terrific sensations! - All these evidences revolved in my brain, and presented themselves in turn like writings on a wheel of fire.
 There came a knock to the door -
 Oh, Meg! Was it she? No; old Wyat whispered Madame something about her room.
 So Madame re-entered, with a little silver tray and flagon in her hands, and a glass. Nothing came from Uncle Silas in ungentlemanlike fashion.
 ‘Drink, Maud,’ said Madame, raising the cover, and evidently enjoying the fragrant steam.
 I could not. I might have done so had I been able to swallow anything - for I was too distracted to think of Meg’s warning.
 Madame suddenly recollected her mistake of that evening, and tried the door; but it was duly locked. She took the key from her pocket and placed it in her breast.
 ‘You weel ‘av these rooms to yourself, ma chère. I shall sleep downstairs to-night.’
 She poured out some of the hot claret into the glass abstractedly, and drank it off.
 ‘’Tis very good - I drank without theenk. Bote ’tis very good. Why don’t you drink some?’
 ‘I could not’, I repeated. And Madame boldly helped herself.
 ‘Vary polite, certally, to Madame was it to send nothing at all for hair’ (so she pronounced ‘her’); ‘bote is all same thing.’ And so she ran on in her tipsy vein, which was loud and sarcastic, with a fierce laugh now and then.
 Afterwards I heard that they were afraid of Madame, who was given to cross purposes, and violent in her cups. She had been noisy and quarrelsome downstairs. She was under the delusion that I was to be conveyed away that night to a remote and safe place, and she was to be handsomely compensated for services and evidence to be afterwards given. She was not to be trusted, however, with the truth. That was to be known but to three people on earth.
 I never knew, but I believe that the spiced claret which Madame drank was drugged. She was a person who could, I have been told. Drink a great deal without exhibiting any change from it but an inflamed colour and furious temper. I can only state for certain what I saw, and that was, that shortly after she had finished the claret she laid down upon my bed, and, I now know, fell asleep. I then thought she was feigning sleep only, and that she was really watching me.
 About an hour after this I suddenly heard a little clink in the yard beneath. I peeped out, but saw nothing. The sound was repeated, however - sometimes more frequently, sometimes at long intervals. At last, in the deep shadow next the farther wall, I thought I could discover a figure, sometimes erect, sometimes stooping and bowing toward the earth. I could see this figure only in the rudest outline mingling with the dark.
 Like a thunderbolt it smote my brain. ‘They are making my grave!’
 After the first dreadful stun I grew quite wild, and ran up and down the room wringing my hands and gasping prayers to heaven. Then a calm stole over me - such a dreadful calm as I could fancy glide over one who floated in a boat under the shadow of the ‘Traitor’s Gate,’ leaving life and hope and trouble behind.
 Shortly after there came a very low tap at my door; then another, like a tiny post-knock. I could never understand why it was I made no answer. Had I done so, and thus shown that I was awake, it might have sealed my fate. I was standing in the middle of the floor staring at the door, which I expected to see open, and admit I knew not what troop of spectres.

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Chapter LXIV: The Hour of Death
 It was a very still night and frosty. My candle had long burnt out. There was still a faint moonlight, which fell in a square of yellow on the floor near the window, leaving the rest of the room in what to an eye less accustomed than mine had become to that faint light would have been total darkness. Now, I am sure, I heard a soft whispering outside my door. I knew that I was in a state of siege! The crisis was come, and strange to say, I felt myself grow all at once resolute and self-possessed. It was not a subsidence, however, of the dreadful excitement, but a sudden screwing-up of my nerves to a pitch such as I cannot describe.
 I suppose the people outside moved with great caution; and the perfect solidity of the floor, which had not anywhere a creaking board in it, favoured their noiseless movements. It was well for me that there were in the house three persons whom it was part of their plan to mystify respecting my fate. This alone compelled the extreme caution of their proceedings. They suspected that I had placed furniture against the door, and were afraid to force it, lest a crash, a scream, perhaps a long and shrilly struggle, might follow.
 I remained for a space which I cannot pretend to estimate in the same posture, afraid to stir - afraid to move my eye from the door.
 A very peculiar grating sound above my head startled me from my watch - something of the character of sawing, only more crunching, and with a faint continued rumble in it - utterly inexplicable. It sounded over that portion of the roof which was farthest from the door, toward which I now glided; and as I took my stand under cover of the projecting angle of a clumsy old press that stood close by it, I perceived the room a little darkened, and I saw a man descend and take his stand upon the window-stone. He let go a rope, which, however, was still fast round his body, and employed both his hands, with apparently some exertion, about something at the side of the window, which in a moment more, in one mass, bars and all, swung noiselessly open, admitting the frosty night-air; and the man, whom I now distinctly saw to be Dudley Ruthyn, kneeled on the sill, and stept, after a moment’s listening, into the room. His foot made no sound upon the floor; his head was bare, and he wore his usual short shooting-jacket.
 I cowered to the ground in my post of observation. He stood, as it seemed to me irresolutely for a moment, and then drew from his pocket an instrument which I distinctly saw against the faint moonlight. Imagine a hammer, one end of which had been beaten out into a longish tapering spike, with a handle something longer than usual. He drew stealthily to the window, and seemed to examine this hurriedly, and tested its strength with a twist or two of his hand. And then he adjusted it very carefully in his grasp, and made two or three little experimental picks with it in the air.
 I remained perfectly still, with a terrible composure, crouched in my hiding-place, my teeth clenched, and prepared to struggle like a tigress for my life when discovered. I thought his next measure would be to light a match. I saw a lantern, I fancied, on the window-sill. But this was not his plan. He stole, in a groping way, which seemed strange to me, who could distinguish objects in this light, to the side of my bed, the exact position of which he evidently knew; he stooped over it. Madame was breathing in the deep respiration of heavy sleep. Suddenly but softly he laid, as it seemed to me, his left hand over her face, and nearly at the same instant there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek, beginning small and swelling for two or three seconds into a yell such as are imagined in haunted houses, accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the arms drumming on the bed; and then another blow - and with a horrid gasp he recoiled a step or two, and stood perfectly still. I heard a horrible tremor quivering through the joints and curtains of the bedstead - the convulsions of the murdered woman. It was a dreadful sound, like the shaking of a tree and rustling of leaves. Then once more he steps to the side of the bed, and I heard another of those horrid blows - and silence - and another - and more silence - and the diabolical surgery was ended. For a few seconds, I think, I was on the point of fainting; but a gentle stir outside the door, close to my ear, startled me, and proved that there had been a watcher posted outside. There was a little tapping at the door.
 ‘Who’s that?’ whispered Dudley, hoarsely.
 ‘A friend,’ answered a sweet voice.
 And a key was introduced, the door quickly unlocked, and Uncle Silas entered. I saw that frail, tall, white figure, the venerable silver locks that resembled those upon the honoured head of John Wesley, and his thin white hand, the back of which hung so close to my face that I feared to breathe. I could see his fingers twitching nervously. The smell of perfumes and of ether entered the room with him.
 Dudley was trembling now like a man in an ague-fit.
 ‘Look what you made me do!’ he said, maniacally.
 ‘Steady, sir!’ said the old man, close beside me.
 ‘Yes, you damned old murderer! I’ve a mind to do for you.’
 ‘There, Dudley, like a dear boy, don’t give way; it’s done. Right or wrong, we can’t help it. You must be quiet,’ said the old man, with a stern gentleness.
 Dudley groaned.
 ‘Whoever advised it, you’re a gainer, Dudley,’ said Uncle Silas.
 Then there was a pause.
 ‘I hope that was not heard,’ said Uncle Silas.
 Dudley walked to the window and stood there.
 ‘Come, Dudley, you and Hawkes must use expedition. You know you must get that out of the way.’
 ‘I’ve done too much. I won’t do nout; I’ll not touch it. I wish my hand was off first; I wish I was a soger. Do as ye like, you an’ Hawkes. I won’t go nigh it; damn ye both - and that!’ and he hurled the hammer with all his force upon the floor.
 ‘Come, come, be reasonable, Dudley, dear boy. There’s nothing to fear but your own folly. You won’t make a noise?’
 ‘Oh, oh, my God!’ said Dudley, hoarsely, and wiped his forehead with his open hand.
 ‘There now, you’ll be all well in a minute,’ continued the old man.
 ‘You said ‘twouldn’t hurt her. If I’d a known she’d a screeched like that I’d never a done it. ’Twas a damn lie. You’re the damndest villain on earth.’
 ‘Come, Dudley!’ said the old man under his breath, but very sternly, ‘make up your mind. If you don’t choose to go on, it can’t be helped; only it’s a pity you began. For you it is a good deal - it does not much matter for me.’
 ‘Ay, for you!’ echoed Dudley, through his set teeth. ‘The old talk!’
 ‘Well, sir,’ snarled the old man, in the same low tones, ‘you should have thought of all this before. It’s only taking leave of the world a year or two sooner, but a year or two’s something. I’ll leave you to do as you please.’
 ‘Stop, will you? Stop here. I know it’s a fixt thing now. If a fella does a thing he’s damned for, you might let him talk a bit anyhow. I don’t care much if I was shot.’
 ‘There now - there - just stick to that, and don’t run off again. There’s a box and a bag here; we must change the direction, and take them away. The box has some jewels. Can you see them? I wish we had a light.’
 ‘No, I’d rayther not; I can see well enough. I wish we were out o’ this. Here’s the box.’
 ‘Pull it to the window,’ said the old man, to my inexpressible relief advancing at last a few steps.
 Coolness was given me in that dreadful moment, and I knew that all depended on my being prompt and resolute. I stood up swiftly. I often thought if I had happened to wear silk instead of the cashmere I had on that night, its rustle would have betrayed me.
 I distinctly saw the tall stooping figure of my uncle, and the outline of his venerable tresses, as he stood between me and the dull light of the window, like a shape cut in card.
 He was saying ‘just to there,’ and pointing with his long arm at that contracting patch of moonlight which lay squared upon the floor. The door was about a quarter open, and just as Dudley began to drag Madame’s heavy box, with my jewel-case in it, across the floor from her room, inhaling a great breath - with a mental prayer for help - I glided on tiptoe from the room and found myself on the gallery floor.
 I turned to my right, simply by chance, and followed a long gallery in the dark, not running - I was too fearful of making the least noise - but walking with the tiptoe-swiftness of terror. At the termination of this was a cross-gallery, one end of which - that to my left - terminated in a great window, through which the dusky night-view was visible. With the instinct of terror I chose the darker, and turned again to my right; hurrying through this long and nearly dark passage, I was terrified by a light, about thirty feet before me, emerging from the ceiling. In spotted patches this light fell through the door and sides of a stable lantern, and showed me a ladder, down which, from an open skylight I suppose for the cool night-air floated in my face, came Dickon Hawkes notwithstanding his maimed condition, with so much celerity as to leave me hardly a moment for consideration.
 He sat on the last round of the ladder, and tightened the strap of his wooden leg.
 At my left was a door-case open, but no door. I entered; it was a short passage about six feet long, leading perhaps to a backstair, but the door at the end was locked.
 I was forced to stand in this recess, then, which afforded no shelter, while Pegtop stumped by with his lantern in his hand. I fancy he had some idea of listening to his master unperceived, for he stopped close to my hiding-place, blew out the candle, and pinched the long snuff with his horny finger and thumb.
 Having listened for a few seconds, he stumped stealthily along the gallery which I had just traversed, and turned the corner in the direction of the chamber where the crime had just been committed, and the discovery was impending. I could see him against the broad window which in the daytime lighted this long passage, and the moment he had passed the corner I resumed my flight.
 I descended a stair corresponding with that backstair, as I am told, up which Madame had led me only the night before. I tried the outer door. To my wild surprise it was open. In a moment I was upon the step, in the free air, and as instantaneously was seized by the arm in the gripe of a man.
 It was Tom Brice, who had already betrayed me, and who was now, in surtout and hat, waiting to drive the carriage with the guilty father and son from the scene of their abhorred outrage.

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Chapter LXV: In the Oak Parlour
 So it was vain: I was trapped, and all was over.
 I stood before him on the step, the white moon shining on my face. I was trembling so that I wonder I could stand, my helpless hands raised towards him, and I looked up in his face. A long shuddering moan - ‘Oh - oh - oh!’ was all I uttered.
 The man, still holding my arm, looked, I thought frightened, into my white dumb face.
 Suddenly he said, in a wild, fierce whisper -
 ‘Never say another word’ (I had not uttered one). ‘They shan’t hurt ye, Miss; git ye in; I don’t care a damn!’
 It was an uncouth speech. To me it was the voice of an angel. With a burst of gratitude that sounded in my own ears like a laugh, I thanked God for those blessed words.
 In a moment more he had placed me in the carriage, and almost instantly we were in motion - very cautiously while crossing the court, until he had got the wheels upon the grass, and then at a rapid pace, improving his speed as the distance increased. He drove along the side of the back-approach to the house, keeping on the grass; so that our progress, though swaying like that of a ship in a swell, was very nearly as noiseless.
 The gate had been left unlocked - he swung it open, and remounted the box. And we were now beyond the spell of Bartram-Haugh, thundering - Heaven be praised! - along the Queen’s highway, right in the route to Elverston. It was literally a gallop. Through the chariot windows I saw Tom stand as he drove, and every now and then throw an awful glance over his shoulder. Were we pursued? Never was agony of prayer like mine, as with clasped hands and wild stare I gazed through the windows on the road, whose trees and hedges and gabled cottages were chasing one another backward at so giddy a speed.
 We were now ascending that identical steep, with the giant ash-trees at the right and the stile between, which my vision of Meg Hawkes had presented all that night, when my excited eye detected a running figure within the hedge. I saw the head of some one crossing the stile in pursuit, and I heard Brice’s name shrieked.
 ‘Drive on - on - on!’ I screamed.
 But Brice pulled up. I was on my knees on the floor of the carriage, with clasped hands, expecting capture, when the door opened, and Meg Hawkes, pale as death, her cloak drawn over her black tresses, looked in.
 ‘Oh! - ho! - ho! - thank God!’ she screamed. ‘Shake hands, lass. Tom, yer a good un! He’s a good lad, Tom.’
 ‘Come in, Meg - you must sit by me,’ I said, recovering all at once.
 Meg made no demur. ‘Take my hand,’ I said offering mine to her disengaged one.
 ‘I can’t, Miss - my arm’s broke.’
 And so it was, poor thing! She had been espied and overtaken in her errand of mercy for me, and her ruffian father had felled her with his cudgel, and then locked her into the cottage, whence, however, she had contrived to escape, and was now flying to Elverston, having tried in vain to get a hearing in Feltram, whose people had been for hours in bed.
 The door being shut upon Meg, the steaming horses were instantly at a gallop again.
 Tom was still watching as before, with many an anxious glance to rearward, for pursuit. Again he pulled up, and came to the window.
 ‘Oh, what is it?’ cried I.
 ‘’Bout that letter, Miss; I couldn’t help. ‘Twas Dickon, he found it in my pocket. That’s a’.’
 ‘Oh yes! - no matter - thank you - thank Heaven! Are we near Elverston?’
 ‘’Twill be a mile, Miss: and please’m to mind I had no finger in’t.’
 ‘Thanks - thank you - you’re very good - I shall always thank you, Tom, as long as I live!’
 At length we entered Elverston. I think I was half wild. I don’t know how I got into the hall. I was in the oak-parlour, I believe, when I saw cousin Monica. I was standing, my arms extended. I could not speak; but I ran with a loud long scream into her arms. I forget a great deal after that.

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Conclusion
Oh, my beloved cousin Monica! Thank Heaven, you are living still, and younger, I think, than I in all things but in years.
 And Milly, my dear companion, she is now the happy wife of that good little clergyman, Sprigge Biddlepen. It has been in my power to be of use to them, and he shall have the next presentation to Dawling.
 Meg Hawkes, proud and wayward, and the most affectionate creature on earth, was married to Tom Brice a few months after these events; and, as both wished to emigrate, I furnished them with the capital, and I am told they are likely to be rich. I hear from my kind Meg often, and she seems very happy.
 My dear old friends, Mary Quince and Mrs. Rusk, are, alas! growing old, but living with me, and very happy. And after long solicitation, I persuaded Doctor Bryerly, the best and truest of ministers, with my dearest friend’s concurrence, to undertake the management of the Derbyshire estates. In this I have been most fortunate. He is the very person for such a charge - so punctual, so laborious, so kind, and so shrewd.
 In compliance with medical advice, cousin Monica hurried me away to the Continent, where she would never permit me to allude to the terrific scenes which remain branded so awfully on my brain. It needed no constraint. It is a sort of agony to me even now to think of them.
 The plan was craftily devised. Neither old Wyat nor Giles, the butler, had a suspicion that I had returned to Bartram. Had I been put to death, the secret of my fate would have been deposited in the keeping of four persons only - the two Ruthyns, Hawkes, and ultimately Madame. My dear cousin Monica had been artfully led to believe in my departure for France, and prepared for my silence. Suspicion might not have been excited for a year after my death, and then would never, in all probability, have pointed to Bartram as the scene of the crime. The weeds would have grown over me, and I should have lain in that deep grave where the corpse of Madame de la Rougierre was unearthed in the darksome quadrangle of Bartram-Haugh.
 It was more than two years after that I heard what had befallen at Bartram after my flight. Old Wyat, who went early to Uncle Silas’s room, to her surprise - for he had told her that he was that night to accompany his son, who had to meet the mailtrain to Derby at five o’clock in the morning - saw her old master lying on the sofa, much in his usual position.
 ‘There was nout much strange about him,’ old Wyat said, ‘but that his scent-bottle was spilt on its side over on the table, and he dead.’
 She thought he was not quite cold when she found him, and she sent the old butler for Doctor Jolks, who said he died of too much ‘loddlum.’
 Of my wretched uncle’s religion what am I to say? Was it utter hypocrisy, or had it at any time a vein of sincerity in it? I cannot say. I don’t believe that he had any heart left for religion, which is the highest form of affection, to take hold of. Perhaps he was a sceptic with misgivings about the future, but past the time for finding anything reliable in it. The devil approached the citadel of his heart by stealth, with many zigzags and parallels. The idea of marrying me to his son by fair means, then by foul, and, when that wicked chance was gone, then the design of seizing all by murder, supervened. I dare say that Uncle Silas thought for a while that he was a righteous man. He wished to have heaven and to escape hell, if there were such places. But there were other things whose existence was not speculative, of which some he coveted, and some he dreaded more, and temptation came. ‘Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.’ There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down. ‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.’
 Dudley had disappeared; but in one of her letters, Meg, writing from her Australian farm, says: ‘There’s a fella in toon as calls hisself Colbroke, wi’ a good hoose o’ wood, 15 foot length, and as by ‘bout as silling o’ the pearler o’ Bartram - only lots o’ rats, they do say, my lady - a bying and sellin’ of goold back and forred wi’ the diggin foke and the marchants. His chick and mouth be wry wi’ scar o’ burns or vitterel, an’ no wiskers, bless you; but my Tom ee toll him he knowed him for Master Doodley. I ant seed him; but he sade ad shute Tom soon is look at ‘m, an’ denide it, wi’ mouthful o’ curses and oaf. Tom baint right shure; if I seed un wons i’d no for sartin; but ‘appen, ’twill best be let be.’ This was all.
 Old Hawkes stood his ground, relying on the profound cunning with which their actual proceedings had been concealed, even from the suspicions of the two inmates of the house, and on the mystery that habitually shrouded Bartram-Haugh and all its belongings from the eyes of the outer world.
 Strangely enough, he fancied that I had made my escape long before the room was entered; and, even if he were arrested, there was no evidence, he was certain, to connect him with the murder, all knowledge of which he would stoutly deny.
 There was an inquest on the body of my uncle, and Dr. Jolks was the chief witness. They found that his death was caused by ‘an excessive dose of laudanum, accidentally administered by himself.’
 It was not until nearly a year after the dreadful occurrences at Bartram that Dickon Hawkes was arrested on a very awful charge, and placed in gaol. It was an old crime, committed in Lancashire, that had found him out. After his conviction, as a last chance, he tried a disclosure of all the circumstances of the unsuspected death of the Frenchwoman. Her body was discovered buried where he indicated, in the inner court of Bartram-Haugh, and, after due legal enquiry, was interred in the churchyard of Feltram.
 Thus I escaped the horrors of the witness-box, or the far worse torture of a dreadful secret.
 Doctor Bryerly, shortly after Lady Knollys had described to him the manner in which Dudley entered my room, visited the house of Bartram-Haugh, and minutely examined the windows of the room in which Mr. Charke had slept on the night of his murder. One of these he found provided with powerful steel hinges, very craftily sunk and concealed in the timber of the window-frame, which was secured by an iron pin outside, and swung open on its removal. This was the room in which they had placed me, and this the contrivance by means of which the room had been entered. The problem of Mr. Charke’s murder was solved.

* * * * *

 I have penned it. I sit for a moment breathless. My hands are cold and damp. I rise with a great sigh, and look out on the sweet green landscape and pastoral hills, and see the flowers and birds and the waving boughs of glorious trees - all images of liberty and safety; and as the tremendous nightmare of my youth melts into air, I lift my eyes in boundless gratitude to the God of all comfort, whose mighty hand and outstretched arm delivered me. When I lower my eyes and unclasp my hands, my cheeks are wet with tears. A tiny voice is calling me ‘Mamma!’ and a beloved smiling face, with his dear father’s silken brown tresses, peeps in.
 ‘Yes, darling, our walk. Come away!’
 I am Lady Ilbury, happy in the affection of a beloved and noblehearted husband. The shy useless girl you have known is now a mother - trying to be a good one; and this, the last pledge, has lived.
 I am not going to tell of sorrows - how brief has been my pride of early maternity, or how beloved were those whom the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. But sometimes as, smiling on my little boy, the tears gather in my eyes, and he wonders, I can see, why they come, I am thinking - and trembling while I smile - to think, how strong is love, how frail is life; and rejoicing while I tremble that, in the deathless love of those who mourn, the Lord of Life, who never gave a pang in vain, conveys the sweet and ennobling promise of a compensation by eternal reunion. So, through my sorrows, I have heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Write, from hencefore blessed are the dead that die in the Lord!’
 This world is a parable - the habitation of symbols - the phantoms of spiritual things immortal shown in material shape. May the blessed second-sight be mine - to recognise under these beautiful forms of earth the ANGELS who wear them; for I am sure we may walk with them if we will, and hear them speak!

[End]