“I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It was only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away, but I heard it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had heard of corpse candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must be a corpse bell tolling of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my bell—how, or how long, I don’t know—and ran home to bed as fast as I could touch the ground.
“I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story to my neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don’t think anybody believed it real. But, that morning, Mr. Reuben Haredale was found murdered in his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.
“That was the bell I heard.
“A bureau was found opened, and a cashbox, which Mr. Haredale had brought down that day, and was supposed to contain a large sum of money, was gone. The steward and gardener were both missing and both suspected for a long time, but they were never found, though hunted far and wide. And far enough they might have looked for poor Mr. Rudge the steward, whose body—scarcely to be recognised by his clothes and the watch and ring he wore—was found, months afterwards, at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been stabbed with a knife. He was only partly dressed; and people all agreed that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed before his master.
“Everybody now knew that the gardener must be the murderer, and though he has never been heard of from that day to this, he will be, mark my words. The crime was committed this day two-and-twenty years—on the nineteenth of March, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three. On the nineteenth of March in some year—no matter when—I know it, I am sure of it, for we have always, in some strange way or other, been brought back to the subject on that day ever since—on the nineteenth of March in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered.”
Chapter 2
“A strange story!” said the man who had been the cause of the narration.—“Stranger still if it comes about as you predict. Is that all?”
A question so unexpected, nettled Solomon Daisy not a little. By dint of relating the story very often, and ornamenting it (according to village report) with a few flourishes suggested by the various hearers from time to time, he had come by degrees to tell it with great effect; and “Is that all?” after the climax, was not what he was accustomed to.
“Is that all?” he repeated, “yes, that’s all, sir. And enough too, I think.”
“I think so too. My horse, young man! He is but a hack hired from a roadside posting house, but he must carry me to London tonight.”
“Tonight!” said Joe.
“Tonight,” returned the other. “What do you stare at? This tavern would seem to be a house of call for all the gaping idlers of the neighbourhood!”
At this remark, which evidently had reference to the scrutiny he had undergone, as mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the eyes of John Willet and his friends were diverted with marvellous rapidity to the copper boiler again. Not so with Joe, who, being a mettlesome fellow, returned the stranger’s angry glance with a steady look, and rejoined:
“It is not a very bold thing to wonder at your going on tonight. Surely you have been asked such a harmless question in an inn before, and in better weather than this. I thought you mightn’t know the way, as you seem strange to this part.”
“The way—” repeated the other, irritably.
“Yes. do you know it?”
“I’ll—humph!—I’ll find it,” replied the man, waving his hand and turning on his heel. “Landlord, take the reckoning here.”
John Willet did as he was desired; for on that point he was seldom slow, except in the particulars of giving change, and testing the goodness of any piece of coin that was proffered to him, by the application of his teeth or his tongue, or some other test, or in doubtful cases, by a long series of tests terminating in its rejection. The guest then wrapped his garments about him so as to shelter himself as effectually as he could from the rough weather, and without any word or sign of farewell betook himself to the stableyard. Here Joe (who had left the room on the conclusion of their short dialogue) was protecting himself and the horse from the rain under the shelter of an old penthouse roof.
“He’s pretty much of my opinion,” said Joe, patting the horse upon the neck. “I’ll wager that your stopping here tonight would please him better than it would please me.”
“He and I are of different opinions, as we have been more than once on our way here,” was the short reply.
“So I was thinking before you came out, for he has felt your spurs, poor beast.”
The stranger adjusted his coat-collar about his face, and made no answer.
“You’ll know me again, I see,” he said, marking the young fellow’s earnest gaze, when he had sprung into the saddle.
“The man’s worth knowing, master, who travels a road he don’t
