“Well, sir, they were both found dead one day, stiff and cold, sir, outside the ruins of the Priory. They had been painting, and their easels were left standing—but they were dead.”
“What has that to do with the case?” asked the vicar with a little smile.
“Don’t you see, sir,” she went on quickly, the same half-scared look coming into her eyes, “that was the ‘Curse’ that caused those mishaps, and I am afraid the ‘Curse’ will be on the two young gentlemen, too.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Mr. Winthrop, “You don’t really believe that the ‘Marshfielden Curse’ as you people call it, had anything to do with the deaths of those two lady artists that occurred over fifty years ago?”
“Indeed I do, sir,” averred the woman. “Why ever since the Priory was dismantled by Henry the Eighth, the ‘Curse’ has been on this place. That wasn’t the only case, sir. There are records of many others—but that was the last.”
“Let me see,” began the vicar, “It’s so long since I even heard it mentioned, that I’ve forgotten what it was.”
The woman’s face contracted as if she was afraid of something, she knew not what, but of something mystic, intangible, uncanny—and she repeated slowly:
When the eighth Henry fair Marshfielden’s monastery took,
Its priory as a palace, its vast income to his privy purse,—
The outcast prior solemnly, by candle, bell and book