“‘Tubal,’ I said, ‘rise and dress quickly. Your master has just come home, dangerously wounded.’ Perhaps I ought then to have gone directly to the assistance of the supposed wounded man, but, somehow, I felt afraid to go alone. Old Tubal, who had been too much accustomed to scenes of violence and their results, in that house, to be very much shocked at what I told him, merely grunted forth:
“‘It’s nothing more’n I expected,’ and then hastened to dress himself and follow me to his master’s room. Well, when we got there——”
“Yes! when you got there!” eagerly exclaimed Gloria, who would hardly let the old lady pause for breath.
“There was no master to be seen! No sign of a master. We looked through some of the nearer rooms, but without finding him. Then we sat down in his room and waited, thinking that he might have gone somewhere about the house, and would be back soon. We waited and waited, until at length I became alarmed; for I thought he might have fainted from loss of blood in some other part of the house. Then old Tubal and myself recommenced our search and went into every room, closet and passage of the house from the attic to the cellar, but without finding any trace of Dyvyd Gryphyn.”
“And was he never found?” inquired Gloria, in a tone of awe.
“Yes, honey, his body had been found twenty miles away, hours before his spirit appeared to me in the hall. At sunrise the next morning, the men who had found it on the duelling ground the other side of Wolf’s Gap, arrived with it at the hall here. There was an inquest, of course, and then the truth came out.”
“What was the truth?”
“Why, it seems that on the occasion of the last feast that Dyvyd Gryphyn held here when he was drunker than usual, he sent for his young wife, and made her come down and sing for his wild companions. She had a beautiful voice. They were all mad that night. They shocked and terrified the poor thing so that near morning she escaped and fled from them, and locked herself up in her room in a state bordering upon distraction.”
“Yes, yes, I have heard that story before.”
“Well, when the man came to his senses the next day, he rode away with his guests as far as Wolf’s Gap, where they all stopped to rest and drink. They spoke rudely of Gryphyn’s hidden beauty, and one man—a Colonel Murdockson—boasted of signs and signals that the lady had given him the night before, to the effect that she was ready to run away with him.”