Among Mr. Gillies's few papers was found a will, bequeathing his entire
property to Neria. This instrument was dated only the day before his death,
and made no allusions to the peculiar conditions involved in the heirship. But
to Neria's delicate conscience this silence only made her duties more onerous;
and, on the day after the funeral, she went to Cragness, and locking herself into

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the library, opened and read the letter of instruction left by Reginald Vaughn
for the guidance of his first heir.

Youth is brave, and Neria was too devout a worshipper of truth to be easily
daunted by mystery. It seemed to her that, if one inquired earnestly after anything,
he must be answered by flesh, or spirit, earth, air, or water. As an
infant may, perchance, see in his first worldly surroundings and attendants the
heaven and the angels he has just left behind, Neria fancied every man and woman
an Ithuriel, armed with the diamond-pointed spear whose touch must extort
truth from its most ingenious involvements.

So she doubted nothing of discovering at her pleasure this secret, whose responsibility
had lain with such nightmare weight upon the musician's mind, and
she only wished that he had sooner taken her into council, that, by seeing the
mystery unravelled in his lifetime, he should have been relieved in death of the
haunting anxiety and remorse so apparent in their last interview.

The names of Reuben and Nancy Brume were signed as witnesses to the
will, but neither was aware of its contents; and the natural curiosity upon the
subject burning in the mind of each was very pleasantly allayed by Neria's
quiet information that she was now possessor of the estate, and should wish
them to continue to fill their present position in the house.

“And will you come and stop here, miss?” asked the housekeeper, in some
bewilderment.

“Not at present,” replied her new mistress, with a smile. “My guardian,
Mr. Vaughn, would hardly think me old enough or wise enough to manage a
house of my own. But after a while, I dare say, I shall come and live here, and
have you to take care of me, Mrs. Brume. Then it will be I who shall sit all
day in the gloomy library, and play at night upon the great organ. It will be
Mr. Gillies all over again. I always thought I should like it.”

“That sort of a life ain't meant for young ladies,” said the housekeeper,
scornfully. “They'd ought to be going to balls and parties, and dressing up,
and keeping company, and getting married. After that's time enough to settle
down.”

Neria smiled again, gently, but with such reserve that Mrs. Brume closed
her lips upon the piece of advice just ready to issue from them, and asked, instead,

“Have you any d'rections to give, Miss Neria, about the way things are to
go here, or shall we just keep on in the old way?”

“In the old way,” said Neria, dreamily. “Let everything be just as it has
always been, more as if the master were gone for a visit than for ever—as if he
might return at any moment. I can hardly believe it otherwise, even yet.”

With a gracious movement of leave-taking, the young mistress of Cragness
descended the path to the beach and flitted away through the twilight, until, in
the distance, she showed like some graceful vision fashioned of the rising mist,
which, at the last, closed over it and reclaimed it.

Nancy Brume stood watching her from the cliff, with arms akimbo and brows
drawn into the scowl universal among dwellers by the sea, whose eyes thus habitually
seek to shelter themselves from the glare of sand and water, and so acquire
a ferocious expression oddly at variance with the real kindliness of nature
almost as universal.

Reuben, lying stretched upon the short, brown grass at her feet, amused himself
with a solitary game of stick-knife.

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“Reub,” said his wife, “I ain't more notional than most folks, but something
she said kind o' ha'nts me.”

“'S that so?” asked Reuben, lacily, adding a slight “Phew!” as the knife,
in its descent, caught him rather sharply upon the knuckles.

“Yes. Didn't you mind she said she wanted everything kept just as if
Gillies had gone off for a little while, and might be back any time.”

“Well, it's less work than to go to changing round, ain't it? What's the
matter with that?”

“Yes, but, Reub, don't you mind how Lahsrus was always saying just the
same thing?”

“Don't know as I do,” returned Reuben, absently, his mind engrossed in
the effort to catch the knife upon the back of his wrist.

“Well, he was. He was always telling that Mr. Reginald, as he called him,
was coming back sure some day, and that everything had got to be kept ready
for him. It used to make my flesh creep, odd times, to watch him going round
and fixing things back when they'd got stirred a little. Don't you know the old
boat he would keep chained to the rock down there till finally the boat rotted
away, piece by piece, and left the chain hanging, just as they say men have done
when they was chained up in dungeons and left to starve?”

“He was cracked, Lahsrus was,” said Mr. Brume, with benevolent contempt.

“Mebbe he was, and then again mebbe he wa'n't,” retorted his wife. “Any
how, he see him, finally.”

“Who—see who?” asked Reuben, leaning on one elbow and looking up in
his wife's solemn face.

“Lahsrus see old Vaughn. It was the very day he died, and I was setting
to my window sewing, and he was setting on the door-rock in the sun, kind of
purring to himself, as he used to, when all to once I see him put his hand up,
shading his eyes, and looking down the path. Then he kind o' lighted up all
over, and looked more man-fashion than I'd seen him for many a day, and, says
he, speaking up as clear and bright as you please, `It's my dear Mr. Reginald —
he always said he'd come.' Then he got up and stood o' one side, turning his
head, just as if some one passed him and went up the entry-way, and then he
followed right along to the libr'y. Mr. Gillies never told what he see or said
when he got there, for he was struck with death himself at that very time; but
I shall always believe that Lahsrus waited for his old master till he come, and
that they both went off together.

“And now, don't you see, Neria kind o' sets it to us to stop here and wait
just the same fashion for Mr. Gillies to come back; and, like enough, here we'll
stick, year after year, and year after year, till we kind o' dry up and lose all our
faculties, just as Lahsrus did, and finally they'll come back and carry us off. It's
just like shipping aboard the Flying Dutchman—seems to me.”

Reuben Brume sat upright and stared at his wife.

“Tell you what, Nance,” said he, “you're getting cracked, too, I reckon;
but, mind you, if it's so, I ain't going to stop here along with a loonytic. How
would I know but you'd take the carving-knife to me some night? I guess,
anyway, I'd best be looking out for a v'y'ge. It's dull work stopping here.”

Mrs. Brume looked contemptuously down at her lord, again recumbent on
the turf.

“'Fore you sign your name to any ship's books,” said she, “you'd oughter
tell the skipper that you're a sick man, and that your ailment 's dreadful catching.”

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“What you driving at now, Nance?” inquired the husband, with an uneasy
foreboding of an impending blow.

“Why there wa'n't never a clearer case of


Fever-de-lurke,
Two stomachs to eat,
And none to work,
since time begun,” said Mrs. Brume, dryly; “and I reckon your best course is
to be off to sea as fast as you can. You'll get nussed with ropes' ends and
b'laying pins there, and that's just the physic for your disorder.”

Reuben turned upon his stomach and silently resumed his game of stick-knife,
while Nancy, with a grim smile upon her lips, returned to the lonely
house, where now, in the dim twilight, the shadows that all day lay hidden in
the corners and corridors, in the height of the vaulted ceilings, or in the angles
of the unlighted stair-case, came boldly out and flitted through the empty rooms,
danced gleefully over the dead men's memories that lay beneath their feet, drew
their clammy fingers over the keys of the great organ, crept into the chair where
Reginald Vaughn and John Gillies had sat watching and waiting, until death
came sailing across the sea and hailed them to take passage with him—hovered
about the hearth and cowered above the blaze until it started up in wrath and
flashed out such a sudden light and heat that the shadows fled gibbering to their
corners, and the Knight in Golden Armor upon the wall stood boldly out, as if
he were charging upon them with his black horse and his proud slogan: “Dieu,
le roy, et le foy du Vaughn!”

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