“That’s a delusion, my baby. You are not alive, neither am I. But—they are alive!” she cried, lifting and waving her arm.
“They? Who?” demanded Wynnette.
“They—the victims of hate, power, cruelty and despotism, whose ruined earthly tabernacles lie all around us. All around us, like the broken shells upon the seashore. They are alive! They are the martyrs of love and truth; the martyrs of faith and freedom, of humanity. They are alive, baby. They stand among that ‘great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and peoples and kindreds and tongues—before the throne—clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.’ Ay, ay! They are alive! But you and I—we are dead.”
“I—I think I understand,” said Wynnette, who was beginning to regain her mental faculties and to recognize in her surroundings some subterranean cave of the cliff, or crypt of the castle, and in her companion some harmless lunatic. “We are in a sense dead and buried, and in a woeful state; but where, in all this woeful state, are we now sitting?”
“Don’t ye ken, bairnie, we are in the place the tyrants called the Dungeon of the Dark Death? And the heaps of gray and white lime that ye see here—or ye might see, gin it were light enough—be the moldering bones of their victims. And the latest victim of all was my lass! my lass! But death could not hold her, nor darkness, nor coldness. She came to life and ascended. She is a fair angel now—one of the fairest of angels. But though she is alive and we are dead, she has not forgotten us; but she comes on this day every year and visits our graves. I always see her when she comes. I can see her through all the clods of the grave that lie so heavy on my heart. Mayhap you may see her, too, baby; but I don’t know, I don’t know,” murmured the plaintive voice, as the old creature slowly shook her head.
“Does she—does she come here?” breathed Wynnette, in an awe-struck tone.
“Ay, she does; and every time she comes she shows me how her body was murdered, and how herself came out of it alive. Look! look!” The woman suddenly started up, crossed to the side of the girl, and clasped her hand and held it fast, saying again: “Look! Listen!” and she pointed up to the upper end of the cavern.
Now by what psychological law this weird old creature impressed her own visions on the imagination of the girl, let the occult scientists explain. I cannot pretend to do so.
But as Wynnette looked and listened, there came a whir-r-r-r through the air, and a thud-d-d upon the distant ground, and the form of a young woman and a child lay there.
Wynnette tried to shriek, but her voice died in her throat.