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, the words of which ran as follow:
THE CARRION CROW
The Carrion Crow is a sexton bold.
He raketh the dead from out the mould;
He delveth the ground like a miser old,
Stealthily hiding his store of gold.
Caw! Caw!
The Carrion Crow hath a coat of black,
Silky and sleek like a priest’s to his back;
Like a lawyer he grubbeth — no matter what way —
The fouler the offal, the richer his prey.
Caw! Caw! the Carrion Crow! Dig! Dig! in the ground below!
The Carrion Crow hath a dainty maw,
With savory pickings he crammeth his craw;
Kept meat from the gibbet it pleaseth his whim,
It can never hang too long for him! Caw! Caw!
The Carrion Crow smelleth powder, ’tis said,
Like a soldier escheweth the taste of cold lead;
No jester, or mime, hath more marvellous wit,
For, wherever he lighteth, he maketh a hit!
Caw! Caw! the Carrion Crow! Dig! Dig! in the ground below!
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 gray old pile.
* * * * *
1. See the celebrated recipe for the Hand of Glory in “Les Secrets du Petit Albert.”
2. The seven planets, so called by Mercurius Trismegistus.
CHAPTER 3
THE PARK
Brian. Ralph! hearest thou any stirring?
Ralph. I heard one speak here, hard by, in the hollow. Peace! master, speak low. Nouns! if I do not hear a bow go off, and the buck bray, I never heard deer in my life.
Bri. Stand, or I’ll shoot.
Sir Arthur. Who’s there?
Bri. I am the keeper, and do charge you stand. You have stolen my deer.
Merry Devil of Edmonton.
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 overhung 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 review before him. The thought of the wayward, vagabond life he had led; of the wild adventures of his youth; of all he had been; of all he had done, of all he had endured — crowded his mind; and then, like the passing of a cloud flitting across the autumnal moon, and occasionally obscuring the smiling landscape before him, his soul was shadowed by the remembrance of the awful revelations of the last hour, and the fearful knowledge he had acquired of his mother’s fate — of his father’s guilt.
The eminence on which he stood was one of the highest points of the park, and commanded a view of the hall, which might be a quarter of a mile distant, discernible through a broken vista of trees, its whitened walls glimmering in the moonlight, and its tall chimney spiring far from out the round masses of wood in which it lay embosomed. The ground gradually sloped in that direction, occasionally rising into swells, studded with magnificent timber — dipping into smooth dells, or stretching out into level glades, until it suddenly sank into a deep declivity, that formed an effectual division, without the intervention of a haw-haw, or other barrier, between the chase and the home-park. A slender stream strayed through this ravine, having found its way thither from a small reservoir, hidden in the higher plantations to the left; and further on, in the open ground, and in a line with the hall, though, of course, much below the level of the building, assisted by many local springs, and restrained by a variety of natural and artificial embankments, this brook spread out into an expansive sheet of water. Crossed by a rustic bridge, the only communication between the parks, the pool found its outlet into the meads below; and even at that distance, and in that still hour, you might almost catch the sound of the brawling waters, as they dashed down the weir in a foaming cascade; while, far away, in the spreading valley, the serpentine meanderings of the slender current might be traced, glittering like silvery threads in the moonshine. The mild beams of the queen of night, then in her meridian, trembled upon the topmost branches of the tall timber, quivering like diamond spray upon the outer foliage; and, penetrating through the interstices of the trees, fell upon the light wreaths of vapor then beginning to arise from the surface of the pool, steeping them in misty splendor, and lending to this part of the picture a character of dreamy and unearthly beauty.
All else was in unison. No sound interrupted the silence of Luke’s solitude, except the hooting of a large gray owl, that, scared at his approach, or in search of prey, winged its spectral flight in continuous and mazy circles round his head, uttering at each wheel its startling whoop; or a deep, distant bay, that ever and anon boomed upon the ear, proceeding from a pack of hounds kennelled
