“And did she so perish?” mournfully inquired the young man.
“I do not know. Some weeks from that night a party of hunters found the dead body of a woman on the mountain; but the birds of prey had found it first and it was unrecognizable! Oh, it is all too, too hideous! It was supposed to be the body of Dyvyd Gryphyn’s victim, and, as she was never heard of afterwards, it probably was hers.”
“And what became of the madman? You were right in calling him a maniac, Gloria, for such he certainly must have been. You said that he was the last owner of Gryphynshold, therefore he must be dead. How did he die?”
“Ah, like nearly all his fierce race! A violent death! On the very day after he had thrust his poor little white slave out into the winter night, he himself fell in a duel with one of the reckless companions of his demoniac orgies of that terrible night when he commanded the hidden beauty to come into their abhorrent presence.”
“Killed in a duel at last,” muttered David Lindsay to himself.
“Yes, and with him perished the last of the evil race of the Gryphyns of Gryphynshold.”
“How came your father to purchase such an ill-omened piece of property?”
“It was advertised to be sold for taxes. Then an heir turned up in a Welsh baronet, who spelled his name in the more modern and civilized manner of G-r-i-f-f-i-n, but who was of the same original Welsh stock, the next of kin, and the heir-at-law, though a very, very, very distant cousin. This gentleman did not want this mountain property, and so, as soon as his claim to it was established, he threw the estate into the market, and my father bought it.”
“What could have induced Count de la Vera to buy such a place?”
“He was looking around for opportunities to invest his money in Virginia lands, being determined to become a citizen of the United States. He thought the Iron Mountain must be rich in the ore that gave it its name, and rich in other ores as well; and that this would be a source of great wealth to his wife and children in the future, if not immediately to himself; for remember that my mother was living at the time of the purchase.”