The man came flushed and nervous. Tuke saw that the door was carefully closed; gathered with his friends about the hearth, and bade Dennis to stand by them.
“Now,” he said, in a low voice, “this is Captain Luvaine, Whimple, from whose father was stolen the ‘Lake of Wine.’ Tell us plainly, and in a few words, the story of its discovery by your sister.”
The man bowed and moistened his lips. Once or twice he glanced in a frightened way about him, as if he sought some loophole of escape from the situation.
“Gentlemen, ’twas in the winter of ’81 that the body, his body, fell from the chains, and that the skull was brought hither by my sister—then a child of five, and a poor natural as she has ever been—to add to a strange collection of odds-and-ends it has been her delight to form. And there it had remained to a certain day after the coming of my master, who took an objection to it, and bade me rid the house of the thing.”
He paused, and passed a hand across his wet brow.
“Go on,” said Tuke. “I will take the blame of its disappearance, and I confess I acted harshly to the girl.”
Luvaine, from lowered eyelids, shot a malignant glance at the speaker.
“There was a woman,” continued Dennis faintly, “that used to come upon me from time to time for the little help I could afford her—a strange, wild wanderer, whose hand was against every man as she imagined every man’s was against her. I gave the skull to her. She asked for it. She would keep and cherish it, she said, in—in memory of a great criminal. I gave it to her, and she took it away.”
“Where——?” began Luvaine; but Tuke motioned him to silence.
“Let the man tell his story in his own way,” he said.