“As you will,” said Walter, in an altered and hollow voice. “I am as a man standing on an eminence, who views the whole scene he is to travel over, stretched before him, but is dizzy and bewildered by the height which he has reached. I know, I feel, that I am on the brink of fearful and dread discoveries; pray God that—But heed me not, sir, heed me not; let us on, on!”
It was now approaching towards the evening; and as they walked on, having left the town, the sun poured his last beams on a group of persons that appeared hastily collecting and gathering round a spot, well known in the neighborhood of Knaresborough, called Thistle Hill.
“Let us avoid the crowd,” said the curate. “Yet what, I wonder, can be its cause?” While he spoke, two peasants hurried by towards the throng.
“What is the meaning of the crowd yonder?” asked the curate.
“I don’t know exactly, your honor, but I hears as how Jem Ninnings, digging for stone for the limekiln, have dug out a big wooden chest.”
A shout from the group broke in on the peasant’s explanation,—a sudden simultaneous shout, but not of joy; something of dismay and horror seemed to breathe in the sound.
Walter looked at the curate. An impulse, a sudden instinct, seemed to attract them involuntarily to the spot whence that sound arose; they quickened their pace, they made their way through the throng. A deep chest, that had been violently forced, stood before them; its contents had been dragged to day, and now lay on the sward—a bleached and mouldering skeleton! Several of the bones were loose, and detached from the body. A general hubbub of voices from the spectators,—inquiry, guess, fear, wonder,—rang confusedly around.
“Yes!” said one old man, with gray hair, leaning on a pickaxe, “it is now about fourteen years since the Jew pedlar disappeared. These are probably his bones,—he was supposed to have been murdered!”
“Nay!” screeched a woman, drawing back a child who, all unalarmed, was about to touch the ghastly relics, “nay, the pedlar was heard of afterwards. I’ll tell ye, ye may be sure these are the bones of Clarke,—Daniel Clarke,—whom the country was so stirred about when we were young!”
“Right, dame, right! It is Clarke’s skeleton,” was the simultaneous cry. And Walter, pressing forward, stood over the bones, and waved his hand as to guard them from further insult. His sudden appearance, his tall stature, his wild gesture, the horror, the paleness, the grief of his countenance, struck and appalled all present. He remained speechless, and a sudden silence succeeded the late clamor.