What is the mystery of Duke Straw?
What was the sin of my mother?
Whose portrait was it that my father nailed to the axle of the wheel?
These and many other of the problems haunting my life came to me in swift succession, only to be passed in dullness and left unanswered.
CHAPTER LX.
WHO KILLED MODRED?
In the instant of realization, as I stood near, death-stricken, where I had stopped, I felt the whole room shake and tremble as the torrent leaped upon the wheel with a flinging shock, heard a clanking screech rise from the monster as it turned, slowly at first, but quickly gathering speed under the awful pressure; heard one last bubbling scream waver up from the depths and die within the narrow vault; then all sense was whelmed and numbed in the single booming crash of water.
Already, indeed, the choked water, hurled high by the paddles, was gushing through the opening in cascades upon the floor. How long would the ancient rafters and beams and walls resist the terrible pressure?
I had no thought or desire to escape. What had taken me long to describe, all passed in a few seconds. But Providence, that here included so many actors in the tragedy in one common ruin, had not writ my sentence, and my young suffering soul it spared to this dark world of memories.
Insatiable yet, however, it claimed a last victim.
He came running back now, breathing hateful triumph in the lust of his wickedness—came to gloat over the work of his evil hands.