Gliding along, Regina reached the outer edge of the railing, and, creeping behind the broken granite shaft which shielded her from observation, she peered cautiously around the corner, and saw that the noble towering tree had been struck by lightning and fired. Whether shivered by electricity, or subsequently blown down by the fury of the gale, none ever knew; but it appeared to have been twisted off about two feet above the ground, and in its fall smote and shattered the marble angel, which a few hours before had hovered with expanded wings over a child's grave. A wreath of blue smoke curled and floated from the heart of the stump, showing that the roots were burning, and the ivy and periwinkle so luxuriant on the previous day were now a mass of ashes and cinders.
On her knees sank Hannah, raking the hot embers into a heap, and at last she bent her grey head almost to the ground. Lifting something on the end of the spade, she uttered a low wail of despair:
"Melted—burnt up! I thought it was tin: it must have been lead!
Either the curse of God, or the work of the devil!"
She fell back like one smitten with a stunning blow, and sobs shook her powerful frame.
Very near the ground the tree had contained a hollow, hidden by the rank lush creepers, and in this cavity she had deposited a small can, cylindrical in form, and similar in appearance to those generally used for hermetically sealed mushrooms. Upon it several spadefuls of earth had been thrown, to secure it from detection, should prying eyes discover the existence of the hollow.
All that remained was a shapeless lump of molten metal.
Along the east a broad band of yellow was rapidly mounting into the sky, and in the blended light of moon and day the churchyard presented a melancholy scene of devastation.
The spire and belfry had fallen upon and in front of the church, and the long building stood like a dismasted vessel among the billowy graves, that swelled as a restless sea around its grey weather-beaten sides. Here and there ancient headstones had been blown down on the mounds they guarded; and one venerable willow in the centre of a cluster of graves had been torn from the earth, and its network of roots lifted until they rested against a stone cross.
Awed by the solemn influence of the time and place, and painfully reminded of her own peril on the previous night, Regina stepped down from the base of the monument, and approached the figure crouching over the blasted smoking roots. There was no rustle of grass or leaf as she limped across the dewy turf, but warned by that mysterious magnetic instinct which so often announces some noiseless, invisible human presence, Hannah lifted and turned her head. With a scream of superstitious terror she sprang to her feet.
Very ghostly the girl certainly appeared, in her snowy mull muslin dress and white shawl, as she leaned forward on the cane, and looked steadily at the old woman. Her long black hair, loosened and disordered by tossing about all night, hung over her shoulders and gave a weird, almost supernatural, aspect to the blanched and sorrowful young face, which in that strange chill light seemed wellnigh as rigid and pallid as a corpse.