as quietly as though they were cut in stone. Meanwhile, the twilight deepened, little gusts of wind arose, and gently shook the old-fashioned window-lattices, making a sound as though feeble hands were trying to throw them open. The dull evening light crept from place to place, and threw great shadows about the room, glanced upon the armour on its panelled walls, and at last began to die away into darkness. The whole scene was eerie, and for some unknown reason it oppressed Dorothy. She wondered why everybody was so silent, and yet she herself did not feel equal to breaking the silence; there was a load upon her heart.
Just then a curious thing happened. As may be remembered, the case containing the wonderful mummied head, found by Eva Ceswick, had years before been placed by Jeremy upon a bracket at the end of the room. Round about this case hung various pieces of armour, and among others, above it, suspended by a piece of string from a projecting hook, was a heavy iron gauntlet. For many years--twenty or more--it had hung from the hook, but now at last the string was worn through, and even as Dorothy was wondering at the silence, it gave. Down came the heavy iron hand with a crash, and, as it passed, it caught the latch of the long air-tight case, and jarred the door wide open.
Everybody in the room sprang to their feet, and, as they did so, a last ray from the setting sun struggled through one of the windows, and rested upon the open case, staining it, and all about it, the hue of blood, and filling the fearful crystal eyes within with a lurid light. How they glowed and shone, to be sure, after their long sleep!--for the case had scarcely been opened for years--while their tremulous glance, now dull, now intense, according as the light played upon them, appeared to wander round and round the room, as though in search of somebody or something.
It was an awful sight which that ray of sunlight showed, as it played upon the trembling crystal orbs, the scornful, deathly features, and the matchless hair that streamed on either side. Together with the sudden break in the silence, caused by the crashing fall of the gauntlet, as it had done many years before, it proved altogether too much for the beholders' nerves.
"What is that?" asked Ernest, with a start, as the gauntlet fell.
Dorothy glanced up and gave a little cry of horror. "Oh, that dreadful head! it is looking at us."
They all rose to their feet, and Dorothy, seizing Ernest by one hand, and covering her eyes with the other, retreated slowly, followed by the others, towards the swing-door. Soon they had reached the door, were through it, down the passage, and out into the peaceful stillness of the evening. Then Jeremy spoke, and his language was more forcible than polite.
"Well, I am blowed!" he said, wiping the cold perspiration from his forehead.
"Oh, Reginald, I do wish you would get that horrible thing out of the house; there has been nothing but misfortune ever since it has been here. I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it!" said Dolly, hysterically.
"Nonsense, you superstitious child!" answered Mr. Cardus, who was now recovering from his start. "The gauntlet knocked the door open, that was all. It is nothing but a mummied head; but, if you don't like it, I will send it to the British Museum to-morrow."
"Oh, please do, Reginald," answered Dorothy, who appeared quite unhinged.
So hurried had been their retreat from the room that everybody had forgotten "Hard-riding Atterleigh" sitting in the dark in the inglenook. But the bustle in the room had attracted him, and already, before they were gone, he had projected his large head covered with the tangled grey locks, and begun to stare about. Presently his eyes fell upon the crystal orbs, and then, to him, the orbs appeared to cease their wanderings and rest upon his eyes. For awhile the two heads stared at each other thus--the golden head without a body in the box, and the grey head that, thrust out as it were from the ingle-wall, /seemed/ to have no body either. They stared and stared, till at last the golden head got the mastery of the grey head, and the old man crept from his corner, crept down the room till he was almost beneath the baleful eyes, and /nodded, nodded, nodded/ at them.
And they, too, seemed to /nod, nod, nod/ at him. Then he retreated backwards as slowly as he had come, nodding all the while, till he came to where the broken assegai lay upon the table, and, taking it, thrust it up his sleeve. As he did so, the ray of light faded and the fiery eyes went out. It was as though the thick white lids and long eyelashes had dropped over them.
None of the other four returned to the sitting-room that night.
When he had recovered from his fright, Jeremy went into his little room, the same in which he used to stuff birds as a boy, and busied himself with his farm accounts. Mr. Cardus, Dorothy, and Ernest walked about together in the balmy moonlight, for, very shortly after the twilight had departed, the great harvest-moon came up and flooded the world with light. Mr. Cardus was in a talkative, excited mood that night. He talked about his affairs, which he had now finally wound up, and about Mary Atterleigh, mentioning little tricks of manner and voice which were reproduced in Dorothy. He talked too about Ernest's and Dorothy's marriage, and said what a comfort it was to him. Finally, about ten o'clock, he said that he was tired and going to bed.
"God bless you, my dears; sleep well! Good-night," he said. "We will settle about that new orchid-house to-morrow. Good-night, good-night."
Shortly afterwards Dorothy and Ernest also went to bed, reaching their room by a back entrance, for they neither of them felt inclined to come under the fire of the crystal eyes again, and soon they were asleep in each other's arms.
The minutes stole on one by one through the dead silence of the night, bearing their records with them to the archives of the past. Eleven o'clock came and fled away; midnight came too, and swept across the world. Everywhere--on land, sky, and sea--there was silence, nothing but silence sleeping in the moonlight.
/Hark!/ Oh, heavens, what was that!
One fearful, heartrending yell of agony, ringing all through the ancient house, rattling the casements, shaking the armour against the panelled walls, pulsing and throbbing in horrible notes out into the night, echoing and dying far away over the sea! Then silence again, silence sleeping in the moonlight.
They sprang from their beds, did every living soul beneath that roof, and rushed in their night-gear, men and women together, into the sitting-room. The crystal eyes seemed to be awake again, for the moon was up and played upon them, causing them now and then to flash out in gleams of opalescent light.
Somebody lit a candle, somebody missed Mr. Cardus; surely he could never have slept through that! Yes, he /had/ slept through it. They ran and tumbled, a confused mass of white, into the room where he lay. He was there sure enough, and he slept very sound, with a red gash in his throat, from which the blood fell in heavy drops, down, down to the ground.
They stood aghast, and as they stood, from the courtyard outside there came a sound of galloping hoofs. They knew the sound of the galloping; it was that of Ernest's great black stallion!
A mile or more away out on the marshes, just before you come to the well-known quicksands, which have, tradition says, swallowed so many unfortunates, and which shudder palpably at times and are unpleasant to look on, stands a lock-house, inhabited by one solitary man, who has charge of the sluice. On this very night it is necessary for him to open his sluice-gates at a particular moment, and now he stands awaiting that propitious time. He is an ancient mariner; his hands are in his pockets, his pipe is in his mouth, his eyes are fixed upon the sea. We have met him before. Suddenly he hears the sound of a powerful horse galloping furiously. He turns, and his hair begins to rise upon his head, for this is what he sees in the bright moonlight:
Fast, fast towards him thunders a great coal-black horse, snorting with mingled rage and terror, and on its bare back there sits a man with a grip of iron--an old man, for his grey locks stream out behind him--who
