Barwood, with an abstracted air, took it to examine. Suddenly he uttered a strange exclamation and fell back in his chair, pale, trembling, almost fainting.
The coin was a Jewish shekel, with a cross cut through at one side.
He pleaded sudden illness, and rode hastily homeward in a state of indescribable agitation.
V.
YOUNG FORTINBRAS.
Barwood's strange and almost forgotten conception was thus at length realized, and the interest with which it had inspired him intensely revived. One of the fatal pieces was found. He would now fain have overthrown the structure of probabilities which he had labored so painfully to elaborate. He reviewed step by step all the details of his former study; but no argument availed in the face of the extraordinary corroboration now offered. The piece was "stamped with a mark in shape like a cross," and the account of Irenaeus was verified.
That this fatal piece should appear in the hands of the people whom of all others he most esteemed and with whom his own fortunes were most intimately bound up, was a terrible shock. This, then, was the clew to the catalogue of Holbrook's misfortunes. What surpassing crime could the old man have committed to be so signally marked out for vengeance? But the question of most vital interest was what could be done to save the family so dear to him from their impending fate.
With the recovery of some calmness, he felt that his first duty was to remove the coin from their possession. But how was it to be done? He could not disclose his knowledge of its baleful properties. It would be set down as the vagary of a disordered brain; nobody would entertain it for an instant. His object must be accomplished, if at all, by artifice.
When he next rode to the farm, nearly a week had elapsed since the evening into which so many distracting emotions had been crowded. He exerted himself to display unusual cheerfulness, with the double object of removing any disagreeable impression which might have been the result of his sudden departure on that occasion, and also of finding means to forward his purpose. The subject uppermost in the thoughts of both was at first carefully avoided, and they talked much in their usual fashion.