'Let us go hence,' ejaculated the sexton, who had rushed to the door, and thrown it wide open. 'Mole! Mole!' cried he, and the dog sprang after him.
'I could have sworn I felt something,' said Luke; 'whence issued that groan?'
'Ask not whence,' replied Peter. 'Reach me my mattock, and spade, and the lantern; they are behind you. And stay, it were better to bring away the bottle.'
'Take them, and leave me here.'
'Alone in the vault—no, no, Luke, I have not told you half I know concerning that mystic statue. It is said to move—to walk—to raise its axe—be warned, I pray.'
'Leave me, or abide, if you will, my coming, in the church. If there is aught that may be revealed to my ear alone, I will not shrink from it, though the dead themselves should arise to proclaim the mystery. It may be—but— go—there are your tools.' And he shut the door, with a jar that shook the sexton's frame.
Peter, after some muttered murmurings at the hardihood and madness, as he termed it, of his grandson, disposed his lanky limbs to repose, upon a cushioned bench without the communion railing. As the pale moonlight fell upon his gaunt and cadaverous visage, he looked like some unholy thing suddenly annihilated by the presiding influence of that sacred spot. Mole crouched himself in a ring at his master's feet. Peter had not dozed many minutes, when he was aroused by Luke's return. The latter was very pale, and the damp stood in big drops upon his brow.
'Have you made fast the door?' enquired the sexton.
'Here is the key.'
'What have you seen?' he next demanded.
Luke made no answer. At that moment the church clock struck two, breaking the stillness with an iron clang. Luke raised his eyes. A ray of moonlight, streaming obliquely through the painted window, fell upon the gilt lettering of a black mural entablature. The lower part of the inscription was in the shade, but the emblazonment, and the words:
were clear and distinct. Luke trembled, he knew not why, as the sexton pointed to it.
'You have heard of the handwriting upon the wall,' said Peter. 'Look there!—'His Kingdom hath been taken from him.' Ha, ha! Listen to me. Of all thy monster race—of all the race of Rookwood I should say—no demon ever stalked the earth more terrible than him whose tablet you now behold. By him a brother was betrayed; by him a brother's wife was dishonoured. Love, honour, friendship, were with him as words. He regarded no ties; he defied and set at nought all human laws and obligations—and yet he was religious, or esteemed so—received the
'No more,' said Luke; 'my brain reels. I am faint. Let us quit this place, and get into the fresh air.' And striding past his grandsire he traversed the aisles with hasty steps. Peter was not slow to follow. The key was applied, and they emerged into the churchyard. The grassy mounds were bathed in the moonbeams, and the two yew-trees, throwing their black, jagged shadows over the grave hills, looked like evil spirits brooding over the repose of the righteous.
The sexton noticed the deathly paleness of Luke's countenance, but he fancied it might proceed from the tinge of the sallow moonlight.
'I will be with you at your cottage ere daybreak,' said Luke. And turning an angle of the church, he disappeared from view.
'So,' exclaimed Peter, gazing after him, 'the train is laid; the spark has been applied; the explosion will soon follow. The hour is fast approaching when I shall behold this accursed house shaken to dust, and when my long- delayed vengeance will be gratified. In that hope I am content to drag on the brief remnant of my days. Meanwhile, I must not omit the stimulant. In a short time I may not require it.' Draining the bottle to the last drop, he flung it from him, and commenced chanting, in a high key and cracked voice, a wild ditty.
Shouldering his spade, and whistling to his dog, the sexton quitted the churchyard.
Peter had not been gone many seconds, when a dark figure, muffled in a wide black mantle, emerged from among the tombs surrounding the church; gazed after him for a few seconds, and then, with a menacing gesture, retreated behind the ivied buttresses of the grey old pile.
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CHAPTER III
THE PARK
LUKE'S first impulse had been to free himself from the restraint imposed by his grandsire's society. He longed to commune with himself. Leaping the small boundary wall, which defended the churchyard from a deep green lane, he hurried along in a direction contrary to that taken by the sexton, making the best of his way until he arrived at a gap in the high-banked hazel hedge, which over-hung the road. Heedless of the impediments thrown in his way by the undergrowth of a rough ring fence, he struck through the opening that presented itself, and, climbing over the moss-grown paling, trod presently upon the elastic sward of Rookwood Park.
A few minutes' rapid walking brought him to the summit of a rising ground crowned with aged oaks, and, as he passed beneath their broad shadows, his troubled spirit, soothed by the quietude of the scene, in part resumed its serenity.
Luke yielded to the gentle influence of the time and hour. The stillness of the spot allayed the irritation of his frame, and the dewy chillness cooled the fever of his brow. Leaning for support against the gnarled trunk of one of the trees, he gave himself up to contemplation. The events of the last hour—of his whole existence—passed in rapid
