IT was late when Colin Clink and his wife retired to rest. Their apartment lay in a snug recess formed by the projection outside of two tower-like portions of the building, in one of which also his father's room was situated.
Setting aside all melancholy and superstitious influences arising from the mournful ceremony which, so short a time before, had taken place, the night seemed sad and forbidding in itself. When he looked a few moments from the window it was as though the blind, dead sky came close to the panes. The landscape that lay far below appeared a black gulf, over which the soughing of the wind sounded like the fitful panting breath, the expiring complaints, of some vast unseen creature of the darkness, whose existence might thus be shadowed to the ear, though not to the eyes, of man. But when associated with the melancholy subject which weighed heavily on all hearts, its influence became far more sensibly felt; and Colin could not but feel as though nature had conspired with death to impress the loss that had just been sustained more solemnly upon the mind.
During an hour or more after Mr. Lupton had retired, Colin indistinctly heard his footsteps as he paced restlessly up and down the room, musing, perhaps, on both long past and recent events, contrasting each, and planning how the actions of his life, could that race but be run over again, should assume a form and regulation different, in many things, to those that had been.
Colin himself could not sleep, but lay awhile lost in thoughtful abstraction, until at length he was startled by the sound of heavier and more hasty feet in Mr. Lupton's chamber; just as though, in turning round, a man should suddenly encounter one whom he did not wish to see, and hastily fall back to avoid a closer meeting. A moment or two afterwards he heard a heavy fall upon the ground.
Our hero instantly leaped up and hurriedly dressed himself again; but before he had time to get out of his room, Mr. Lupton's bell had been rung, and his valet summoned to him. Finding such to be the case, Colin remained within his chamber. But shortly afterwards a knocking was heard at his door, and on opening it he found the valet standing in fear outside, and scarcely able to deliver in intelligible language the message with which he was charged, desiring Colin, at Mr. Lupton's earnest request, to go into the other chamber to him immediately.
This, fearing something had happened, he accordingly did; and having bid the servant wait with a light in an unoccupied room not far off, shut the door after him.
Near the old fire-place, in which yet burned the last embers of what had been a comfortable fire, he found Mr. Lupton sitting in an antique carved arm-chair, with a marvellous appearance of composure, an expression of stillness that seemed almost unnatural, as though the finger of some awful event had been laid upon his vital powers, and had suddenly almost stopped them. It was as though his heart feared to beat or his lips to breathe. At the same time his flesh was ghastly white, his features were rigid, and his eyes dilated with an indescribable expression of terror.
“Are you ill, sir?” demanded Colin with much concern. Mr. Lupton only pressed the hand of the young man, as if glad once more to lay hold of flesh and blood, and then drew him close to his side, by way of reply.
“I hope nothing has occurred?” again observed Colin. “But you are ill,—I see you are.”
“No!”—at length stammered his father tremulously, “but—my boy—I—I—have seen her!”