Trees, sky, and space were suddenly bathed in a brilliant, lurid light, the like of which I have never since seen, nor ever shall again. It came and went in a space of time which only thought could measure; and this is what it showed us:—
Yawning at our feet the deep pit and sullen waters of the quarry, for we were scarcely a single step from the precipitous edge; the huge piles of slate and the sheds with the workmen’s tools scattered around; and my father, his arms thrown upwards in agony, and a wild cry bursting from his lips, at the very moment that he was hurled over the opposite side of the chasm!
We saw the frantic convulsions of despair upon his ashen face, his eyes starting from their sockets, as he felt himself falling into space; and we saw the dim outline of another man staggering back from the brink, with his hands outstretched before his face, in horror at what he had done.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the fierce glare vanished. The heavens—only a moment before open and flooding the land with sheets of living fire—were black and impenetrable, and the crashing thunder shook the air around and made the earth tremble, as though it were splitting up and the very elements were being dissolved.
With a cry, the heartrending anguish of which will ring for ever in my ears, my mother sank down, a white, scared heap; and I, my limbs unstrung and my senses numbed, crouched helpless beside her. Then the rain fell and there was silence.
CHAPTER IV.
MY MOTHER’S WARNING.
For many weeks after that terrible night in Rothland Wood, I lay wrestling with a fierce fever, my recovery from which was deemed little short of miraculous. A sound constitution, however, and careful nursing brought me round, and I opened my eyes one sunny morning upon what seemed to me almost a new world.
The first thing that I can clearly remember after my return to consciousness was the extraordinary change which had taken place in my mother. From a beautiful, active woman, she seemed to have become transformed into a stern, cold statue.
Even now I can recall how frightened I was of her during those first days of convalescence, and how I shrank from her constant presence by my bedside with a nameless dread.
The change was in her appearance as well as in her manner. Her rich brown hair had turned completely grey, and there was a frigid, set look in her face, denuded of all expression or affection, which chilled me every time I looked into it. It was the face—not of my mother, but of a stranger.