taking place he took up a closer intimacy with his brother, who was very many years younger than himself, and a poor man. The result of this intimacy was their emigration together to this country and the purchase of this property. There was, however, no house on it then, and Mathew Malbraith designed and had the Moat built, calling it after his English home, and designing to pass the remainder of his days in it, as indeed he eventually did.
“For ten years before his death Mathew Malbraith heard no word of his banished son, yet his brother had betrayed the absent youth so far as to hide all knowledge of the letters he received from him from the unhappy father, who, in his loneliness, repented him sadly of his son’s loss, and would have made him amends in all ways could he only have found out the whereabouts of his ill-used lad. When I tell you that the name of the dead man’s son was Cyrus Malbraith, you will anticipate my story in a measure.”
“Yes,” I replied. “You are the son of Mr. Mathew Malbraith yourself?”
“I am; I am Cyrus Malbraith.”
“Pray go on, for I am more and more interested now that I know that.”
“You are, of course, but now comes the part of my narrative that will most astonish you. I had been for years in San Francisco, the father of a happy family, and in prosperous circumstances, when I, one night, awakened from a strange dream. I had dreamed that I had heard my father’s voice crying aloud to me, ‘Come! O Cyrus!’ and in, as it sounded, the most awful bodily agony. I awoke with my heart beating with abnormal rapidity, and moisture breaking through every pore of my body, and it was some moments before I could compose myself in the belief that I had not really heard my own name uttered loudly.
“Well, I slept again, and was awakened by the same call, but the cry, ‘Cyrus, O Cyrus!’ was fainter. I sprang from my bed and drew on some clothes, determined to keep awake and reason myself out of the nightmare that seemed to have taken possession of me, so I sat down in an armchair by the bed.
“As I sat there, with my hand on my forehead, that felt hot and throbbing, I raised my eyes and saw between me and the door a man’s form lying, as it seemed, upon the floor, with a bruised and bloody face turned toward me with its appealing eyes fixed on mine. The face was my father’s, and I got up to stagger toward the form, but it was gone, and I fell forward on my face to the spot where it had appeared. I was found there insensible, and lay for many weeks after in the grasp of a violent illness, to the approach of which, I was constrained to ascribe the fancied appearance and voice of my parent.”
“Doubtless you were already delirious when you dreamt of the call,” I said.
“I do not think so; nor, I think, will you when you are aware that it was on that very night and at that very hour my poor father was murdered in this house, but it was not for long after that I knew that, or that it was my Uncle George’s hand that struck the death-blow. That news reached me in this letter that was delivered to me in due course by the foreign mail, and the contents of which brought me to Australia—read it.”
He placed the letter before me, and I read—
From The Moat House,
29th October, 18—.
Nephew Cyrus,—I cannot die without confession of my great sin to you before I go hence and am no more. I write this from my death-bed in this house, that my hands desecrated with the blood of my brother, Cain that I am, and was accursed and deprived of hope. Here I lie in grievous and sore pain, and with none to close mine eyes save him who aided me in my crime, and from whom I have to hide the knowledge of this my confession, lest he should with his own hands avenge your father’s death by adding to the stains already upon them that of the poor blood that courses so feebly in the veins of these fingers which I now for the last time hold this pen. In the tower room above this where my bed is we despoiled foully my brother and your unhappy father of his life, and here I expiate in pain of body and despair of soul a deed done on the 29th day of October 18—, at between half-past eleven and twelve o’clock at night. My life has been one long misery since that hour, which has never been repeated upon the dial that our victim’s form has not haunted my bed. I do not ask your forgiveness, for I have forfeited that of the God who made me.—
Your unhappy uncle,
GEORGE MALBRAITH
I raised my eyes as I finished the perusal of this letter, and saw that the gaze of Cyrus Malbraith was fixed on the dial plate of his watch, and that the hands were approaching the hour I was now awaiting with the strangest feelings.
“What do you think now?” he asked. “The very hour of the month there confessed to was that in which I heard my father’s call and saw his face.”
“I do not know what to think. My God! What is that?”
We both arose to our feet as a heavy fall seemed to take place on the floor above us, and a dreadful sound of scuffling and stamping of feet, as though a deadly struggle for life were going on in that long closed room. We neither spoke or moved until cries and stifled shrieks for mercy gave place to one loud call, and “Cyrus, O Cyrus!” was heard as plainly as though uttered by human lips.
“I am here father; I am coming!” shouted the poor son, as he darted toward the door and opened it just as the very silence of death itself succeeded the previous noise above.
“You forget, you forget!” I cried, as I also ran to the door with the intention of closing it; “you cannot help the dead.” But he waved me off and whispered, “Hush! It is not over,” as the door above opened and heavy steps seemed to bear some heavy burden, tramp, tramp down the stairs and past the open door where we stood.
I don’t know what came over me, but I suppose it was the courage of desperation. The brilliant light from the pair of candles on the table poured out into the landing as I dashed outside and planted myself in the middle of it. My revolver was in my hand, and its muzzle was pointed up the stairs, down which I yet heard the approaching tramp.
“In the name of Heaven, stand back; it is close upon you!” said the horrified watcher; but I saw nothing and only heard the heavy footsteps as they sounded nearer and nearer.
“Where is it? I see nothing!” I said, as a strange rustle seemed to pervade the air around me and my outstretched hand encountered the cold features of a dead body. Yet there was nothing. My hand was stretched into a space fully illuminated by the candles, yet I felt the dead features and the damp hair and heard a faint groan that might have been the last from a dying man’s lips, and then there was a silence unbroken save by my own hard and terrified breathing.
I drew back into the apartment and closed and locked the door behind me. Cyrus had already gone, and was leaning weakly against the window through which the moonlight streamed. He indeed seemed incapable of speech, but all at once he beckoned me to his side.
“Look, is this the end?” he whispered.
I went to his side and looked out. Beneath the tower lay the grass-grown garden with its overgrown shrubberies casting dark, heavy shadows across the white patches of moonlight, and straight down toward the river was an opening in the trees, through which the broad gleam of water was visible as it sparkled in the moonbeams or hid in the shelter of sedge and willow. As I followed the eyes of Cyrus, mine rested on the apparent figure of a man staggering, as it seemed, under a heavy burden that hung limply over his shoulders.
This dead apparition crossed the grass and moved down the vista toward the river, disappearing suddenly by the bank just as the edge of a great cloud touched the moon and covered her up with a pall of sable. It was
