“Not here!”
“Not here.”
“Was it you, then, Margaret? Why?”
“I didn't call you.”
“Who then?” he shrieked. “Who called me?”
The night wind moved on monotonously, and the moonlight was undisturbed, like glassy water.
“When I came away,” she said, “I thought you would marry her. You didn't, then? But why should she call you?”
“I left the village suddenly!” he cried. “I grew to dread, and then to hate it. I buried myself from the knowledge of it, and the memory of it was my enemy. I wished for a distant death, and these fifty years have heard the summons to come and lay my bones in this graveyard. I thought it was Ellen. You, sir, wear an antique dress; you have been long in this strange existence. Can you tell who called me? If not Ellen, where is Ellen?” He wrung his hands, and rocked to and fro.
“The mystery is with the dead as with the living,” said Ambrose. “The shadows of the future and the past come among us. We look in their eyes, and understand them not. Now and again there is a call even here, and the grave is henceforth untenanted of its spirit. Here, too, we know a necessity which binds us, which speaks not with audible voice and will not be questioned.”
“But tell me,” moaned the other, “does the weight of sin depend upon its consequences? Then what weight do I bear? I do not know whether it was ruin or death, or a thing gone by and forgotten. Is there no answer here to this?”