“Ah!” said Ben, “I am somewhat fond of my bed as a usual thing, but this is better than sleep. Come, let us spur up our steeds for another gallop.”
So away we went under the dark roof of the woods until we had passed two miles of them and found ourselves in the high-road that leads from Darrington to Smeaton. We drew rein and looked round us.
“There is Castle Hill,” said Ben.
I looked at the pile of buildings rising above us to our left. I had never set eyes on the place since the night when Philip Lisle and I visited it in search of Dennis and found him flown. I had desired nothing so much as to see it and its master when I rode away from Peterborough; nay, not even my own homestead and those it sheltered. But now my passion was dead, for Rupert Watson was beyond my reach. The Almighty vengeance had descended upon him in no scant measure.
“They say Rupert’s madness increaseth,” said Ben. “His nephew hath come to manage matters, and is doubtless whole and sole master now. They say, too, that—”
“My God, Ben!” I cried suddenly. “What is that? Look—by the gate of the fold.”
Out of the gate right before us came a figure all in white, leading a gray horse by the bridle. My blood turned chill as I watched it, it looked so ghostly in the moonlight. As we stood rooted to the spot the figure leaped to the horse’s back and came across the paddock in our direction.
“Will!” said Ben. “ ’Tis Rupert Watson! He hath risen from his bed—see, he hath his nightclothes on—and has come a-riding in his madness. A blind man riding! See, ’tis the old gray horse he used to ride to market.”
“And it is blind, too,” I whispered back. “It hath been blind this two years. Ben, what shall we do? Must we not stop him and rouse his friends?”
“Hush!” said Ben. “Make no sound—let us see what he is after.”
We stood silent and breathless at the roadside until that ghostly pair were close upon us. Then we saw that it was indeed Rupert Watson, clad in his nightclothes, with his white hair and beard falling about his face, and his sightless eyes burning with a fierce light. I shut my eyes and shivered, for the sight was a terrible one—a blind man riding a blind horse!
He passed us at a yard’s distance, chattering and muttering to himself and the horse. When he had got to a little distance we turned our horses and followed him on the soft grass. In this way we rode up the hill. When we reached the summit we found the blind horse and its blind, mad rider standing on the highest bit of road, with their heads turned across the land as if they could see. Perhaps they had been used in other days to come there and gaze at the view. For before them in the moonlight stretched a long, level piece of moorland, nearly a mile across, with neither wood nor hedge to bar their progress, and at its furthest limit a great drop of a hundred feet over Smeaton Crag.
“What are they doing—they can see naught?” whispered Ben fearfully, as we drew near. “Hark—how he raves, Will!”
Rupert Watson had risen in his saddle and was shouting and gesticulating with fierce words and motions.
“A last ride, good Greyfoot!” he shouted. “A last ride together across the land. Let all the ghosts, and the dead men, and the devils of hell follow us. On! on!”
He drove his spur into the blind horse’s side as he screamed out the last word. The horse neighed, rose on its hind feet, and then darted across the land like a mad thing, its rider shouting and yelling.
“Ride, Ben, ride!” I cried, and drove both spurs into Captain’s sides. “Ride, man! The Crag! They will be over the Crag!”
Never in all my life did I ride as I rode that night in the moonlight after the awful figures that went before, screaming and yelling like demons of hell. The wind flew by me and cut my face, the horse shivered and quivered as I drove the spurs again and again into his sides; Ben, urging his steed with voice and whip, was left behind and out of sight in a minute. But not a yard did we gain on the mad rider and his mad horse. On, on, on they went like the wind. I rose in my stirrups and shouted after them, and still they flew forward. And then suddenly they came to the smooth, broad surface of the Crag, and beyond it the deep blackness of the valley, and beyond that the village of Smeaton sleeping in the moonlight across the vale. The awful figures in front abated nothing of their speed, but were over the Crag like a flash of lightning and lost in the abyss below.
I pulled up my own panting and suffering beast, and, drawing near to the Crag, laid myself along the ground and looked over. Far beneath me lay the gray horse
