CHAPTER XI.

THE DEVIL'S GRIP.

'Let us go together,' said Mrs. Chepstow at last, in a shaking voice.

'No,' replied her sister, decisively. 'Do you stay here and guard my son. I must go to meet them yonder alone.'

'Them! who are they? Do you think my cousin is there too?'

'Satan and his imps are there. Hush! you must not question me. If they have taken him, they must take me also--unless I can win him back! That is the question, for I cannot bear to lose him. Either he must return to me, or I will follow him: I cannot live apart from him. Hush! Do you stay by the child; and on your life, do not come near the Oak till after sunrise.'

While Lady Kildhurm had been speaking in this strange fashion, she was making her preparations to go forth, and the only provision against the storm and its portents which she took with her consisted of a small Bible, which she put in her bosom, and a cross of carved ivory, which she hung at her girdle. Thus equipped, and wearing still the embroidered satin gown which she had put on that evening in honour of her guest, she went out, and the darkness closed upon her. Mrs. Chepstow crept fearfully to the child's crib, and knelt down there; and crying, praying, and dropping asleep by turns, she passed the long hours of that memorable night.

But Lady Kildhurm, on issuing from the gate, made straight for the Oak. As she approached it, a kind of phosphorescent gleam seemed to hover about the branches, such as sailors sometimes behold on the yardarms of their vessel in bad weather. The gale, however, had suddenly fallen almost calm; and though drops of rain fell occasionally, it was evident that the storm had raged itself out. The sea tossed its waves upwards aimlessly, as if forgetting whither to drive them, and therefore appealing to the clouds. A sense of exhaustion and heaviness seemed to pervade nature, as if she had aroused herself to do some hideous deed, and now, the deed being done, were awaiting shudderingly what should follow.

The woman paused just outside the circle of the Oak's boughs, and sent her glance resolutely into the obscurity underneath. After a few moments' scrutiny, she took the ivory cross between her hands, and went forward. The phosphorescent gleams wavering to and fro, illuminated duskily the figure of a man stretched out near the base of the trunk. Lady Kildhurm crouched down beside him and spoke close to his ear:

'Norman, thy wife is with thee!'

The man emitted a stertorous breath, but uttered no word.

'Norman, thou art dying. Tell me, how is it with thy soul? for whither thou goest thy wife shall follow thee. If it is well with thee, kiss this cross for a sign. See I hold it to thy lips.'

But the man's lips did not move.

'Has the Evil One overcome thee, then?' said the woman sadly, after a pause. 'But take comfort, my beloved, for I will not desert thee. We have seen and known many marvellous things, Norman--thou and I together: and I have never shrunk from going along with thee, hand in hand, wherever thou didst lead the way. And now, my love shall go with thee across the grave; I will not seek a happiness where thou art not; and in proof of it, my husband, if thou biddest me to fling the cross into the sea, and to tear the leaves from the Holy Book and cast them on the air I will do it! Only move thy hand in answer, and it shall be enough.'

For a long time, as it seemed, the man lay wholly motionless; his life, which had hung trembling on the balance, appeared quite to have slipped away. A great fear bestirred itself in Lady Kildhurm's soul: if her husband died, and made no sign as to whither he had gone, how should she follow him? Under the influence of this dread, she placed her lips to his ear, and spoke sharply and urgently:

'Norman, my husband,' she cried; 'come back! Tell me what I am to do!'

A tremor passed through the man's body. Slowly and stiffly he raised himself on one arm, and lifting the other hand, he pointed upwards.

'There!' he muttered, in a sluggish but articulate tone; 'there is treasure! seek for it!'

For a moment after saying these words, he maintained his position: one hand pointing upwards, while his face, on whose features death was visible, beat heavily towards the earth. Then, stiffly, he sank back; his wife received his head in her lap. He was already dead: and, indeed, his spirit seemed to have returned to its human clay, in obedience to the wife's summons, only to utter those ambiguous sentences, and then to finally depart. But, ambiguous or not, they had answered their purpose; they had planted hope, like a seed, in the very midst of the bereaved woman's despair. He had spoken to her of a treasure above--a treasure in Heaven; and had bade her seek it there. But if he knew of a treasure in Heaven, it must needs be a treasure which he himself had laid up there: and thither, consequently, he must himself have gone. So reasoned Lady Kildhurm; and she forbore to fling away her cross, or scatter the leaves of the Holy Book to the winds. In her shaken and now distempered mind, she beheld a vision of a long vigil of prayer and sanctity, and at the end a death which would be blessed, because it would unite her once more to him. She drew the lifeless body to the foot of the Oak, and seated there, resting against the weather-blackened bole, she waited for the morning.

The morning dawned early and pure, with a sky like banks of wild roses and primroses, and breezes cool and sweet breathing from them. The facile sea translated these fragrant glories into deeper-toned but scarce less enchanting beauty; and the earth sparkled with freshness. But Kildhurm's Oak, standing in the midst of so much loveliness, did not mingle with it, but rather seemed to hold darkly and grimly aloof from it, as if conscious of a spirit altogether at variance with the gentler influences of creation. It stretched its branches above the group of lifeless and living humanity huddled beneath it, with an air of sardonic protection. 'Behold my handiwork!' it appeared to say, 'and sweeten it with the graces of the morning if you can!' When Mrs. Chepstow and the old gardener and the boy, Philip, first came upon the two, they thought that both were dead. But as they drew near, they perceived that the woman's eyes were open and seeing, though there was a wild and unsettled expression in them. Nor did she answer when her sister or the old man addressed her; she only whispered to herself, and then bent over and whispered again in the dead man's ear, and smiled. But when her little son Philip spoke to her in his childish tones, some vestige of motherly memories glimmered in her haggard face; and presently she beckoned him to her.

'There, my son,' she said in solemn tones, pointing upwards with her finger; 'there is treasure! seek for it!'

'Where, mamma?' demanded the little fellow. 'In the Oak?'

Lady Kildhurm smiled drearily, and relapsed into silence.

A stretcher was brought, and the body of Sir Norman was carried back to the Tower. The manner of his death was a mystery, and one which was not for many years fully explained. His mare, still saddled and bridled, was found in her stable, whither she had evidently made her way after the catastrophe to her rider had happened. But of what nature had been that catastrophe? It was found, upon examination, that the Baronet's neck had been dislocated, which of course amply accounted for the fact of his death, though not for anything beyond that. Some opined that his horse must have taken fright during the storm, and rushing beneath the Oak had either thrown the Baronet there, or he had been swept off his saddle by a branch of the tree. This latter hypothesis seemed plausible enough, though there were still those three terrible screams left uninterpreted. The screams, however, might have been comfortably ignored, had it not been for a certain appalling sign of violence which had been left upon the person of the dead man himself, and the significance of which, if it could not be fathomed, it was equally impossible to do away with. The right hand, from the wrist to the finger-ends, was stripped of the skin, and in parts even of the flesh: the bone of the thumb was crushed, and the wrist was wrenched out of joint. These indications--so far as the awe-stricken senses of the beholders were able to apprehend them--seemed to show that the Baronet's hand must have been caught in a grasp of superhuman strength; and that in tearing it free with the energy of desperation, he had left part of its substance behind. Whose hand, then, had gripped his own so hard? and for what purpose? any answer to such questions must evidently be purely conjectural. It was indeed a grisly problem to ponder over, and one which nervous people would rather discuss with cronies in broad daylight than with their own minds in the small hours of the night. Especially would this be the case after certain wiseacres had intimated their opinion that the marks left upon Sir Norman's hand had been made by no other talons than those of his Satanic majesty; who must have been strangely impressed with the idea that the Baronet was his property--if firmness of grasp is to be taken as any criterion of conviction of ownership. On the other hand, it was to be said in the Baronet's favour that he had, after all, succeeded in wrenching himself loose; but since a rough comparison of times proved that he must have died a few minutes after this escape, the doubt suggested itself whether, in his disembodied state, Satan might not have proved too strong for him. Might it not be, in fact, that although the fleshly hand had been freed, the spiritual one had remained in the Arch-Enemy's gripe? Three screams of horror and agony had been heard, but not so much as a single shout of triumph and victory. Upon the whole, therefore, the preponderance of contemporary opinion went rather against poor Sir Norman, though it was admitted by everyone that it was never safe to dogmatise about an occurrence of this kind. Besides, the man was dead, and dead people, even when they have lived under the suspicion of being wizards, had better not be abused. Sir Norman, accordingly, was buried with the ceremonies of His Majesty's most Christian Church. On opening his will, in which the few possessions he owned were bequeathed to his wife in trust for their son, it was observed that particular mention was made of a signet ring; but the ring was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Chepstow, however, being interrogated, declared that the Baronet had always been in the habit of wearing this ring on the fourth finger of his right hand; and that she had noticed it there on the last occasion of her seeing him alive. This evidence made it clear that whoever had squeezed the Baronet's hand so tightly was, in all likelihood, the present wearer of the signet ring. For the rest, the evidence was not of much practical value--unless it should aid some time in the identification of the other party to this mysterious and grisly encounter.

About the time that the mortal remains of Sir Norman were safely laid in their last resting-place, the drowned corpse of Colonel Banyon was discovered by a fisherman some distance down the coast. It was plain from the condition of the body--many of the bones on the left side had been broken--that the Colonel must have fallen from a great height; and the subsequent discovery of his horse, in a similar shattered state, helped the coroner in coming to the conclusion that the deceased must have ridden over the cliffs during the late storm. There was no trace of the leather bag of jewels which the Colonel was reported to have had with him; but his garments had become so much torn and loosened by the action of the waves and the attacks of fishes, that this was not surprising. The gems, if they were anywhere, must be at the bottom of the bay; such was the coroner's verdict upon this point; and it had so much weight, with the fishermen's boys along the coast, that for many years thereafter, squads of them might be seen every day at low tide, groping amidst the sands and seaweeds for precious stones. But not so much as a single diamond, emerald, or ruby ever rewarded these industrious searchers.