He—all the watchers, looked round with a start. Against the further wall a deathly shape was risen upon its elbow—Brander, gasping and shaking and holding his hand to his wounded chest. He nodded frantically, as if he would say, “Go on!”
“It had fallen out, to the bottom of the bag in which the skull was placed for removal. This bag the girl Darda had used, it seems, for transporting her relics to the lodge. The rogues found it there and collected fire-wood in it. Darda, when she escaped, must have pulled out the sticks, returned her treasures to the bag, and brought all home with her. Still those possessions in her poor life that represented most to her, she must carry them with her when she leapt from the parapet; and to me this moment the bag was brought packed as she had left it. Through all this lust of violence and misery the stone hath remained unguessed at where it dropped from the socket of the skull; and, while the scoundrels yonder were gnashing and whetting their teeth, there it lay in their midst, within reach of all, and not a man might buy himself with the knowledge an hour’s surcease of the hell to which he was condemned.”
He turned—he could not help it—with an air of irrepressible triumph to the wounded wretch away from him. A fierce mockery of the creature’s impotent malice was on his lips, but nobility prevailed and he forbore to express it. For a moment Brander stared at him as if he would have bartered his last chance of life for a loaded pistol in his hand; then, with a rending groan, he went flat upon his straw pillow and turned his face to the wall.
A silence of some minutes succeeded, while the dying man twisted the shapeless lump feebly in his fingers. Then, all at once he was speaking again, and his voice gathered strength over the painful syllables.
“Kithless and alone; pre-doomed to a curse, and conquered by it at the last. What chance has ever been mine—what hope to escape the ambush laid for me? The love of woman——”
He slewed his head about, with its melancholy burning eyes, and his gaze dwelt upon the girl beside him.
“The love of woman,” he moaned faintly, “what might it have made of me? I was debarred from that and all by a foul inheritance. The sins of the fathers—the sins of the fathers!”
Again a silence fell; but, of a sudden, with a convulsive effort, he had forced himself up sitting, and, leaned upon one hand, was devouring the stone with a great hunger of vision.
“A life of torment for a minute of ecstasy!” he cried in a strong voice; “and who shall accept the heritage now to his undoing? Is there any fool in the world invites the curse?”
“Luvaine,” said Sir David, gently, “let me take the vile thing and hurl it into the sea.”