Another of the comparatively clear intervals had come, and it was sufficient to show the great rocking-stone in motion and the figure that was swaying it. To and fro it went on its heels' keel, the man making frantic efforts to increase the depth to which it rose and fell. To and fro, to and fro it swayed, and every fall was deeper than the last, until at last it was swinging so that the side almost touched the rock beyond. The man thrust his shoulder beneath the shoulder of the moving mass of stone, pushing it back every time it bowed toward him. Never before had it swung like this. At last it staggered on to the edge of the cup on which it was poised—staggered, but recovered itself and slipped into its place again. It swung back and jerked out of the cup as before. One more swing, with the man flinging his whole weight upon it; for a second it trembled on the edge of the hollow fulcrum, and then—it failed to return. It toppled slowly over upon the granite rock. For a moment its descent was retarded by the man, who was crushed like a walnut beneath it, then with a crash of broken crags it fell over the brink of the height to the ground, fifteen feet beneath.
Wesley left the girl with her hands pressed against her eyes and hurried to the fallen mass. A man's hand projected from beneath it—nothing more. But for this it would have been impossible to say that a body was beneath it. The mighty stone did not even lie flat on the ground; it had made a hollow for itself in the soft earth. It had buried itself to the depth of a foot, and beneath its base Pritchard lay buried.
CHAPTER XXII
Not until the afternoon had the storm moderated sufficiently to allow of Wesley and his companion returning to Porthawn. For a full hour after the fall of the rocking-stone they remained together in the shelter. They were both overcome by the horror of what they had witnessed. Happily the charred crown of branches which remained on the tree that had been struck down, after the rain had extinguished the blaze, was enough to hide the fallen stone, and that ghastly white thing that lay thrust out from beneath it like a splash of lichen frayed from the crag. But for another hour the tempest continued, only with brief intervals, when a dense and smoky greyness took the place of the blackness. It seemed as if the storm could not escape from the boundary of the natural amphitheatre in the centre of which was the mound which Wesley had used as his pulpit; and to that man whose imagination was never a moment inactive, the whole scene suggested a picture which he had once seen of the struggle of a thousand demons of the Pit, around a sanctified place, for the souls of those who were safe within the enclosure. There were the swirling black clouds every one of which let loose a fiery flying bolt, while the winds yelled horribly as any fiends that might be struggling with obscene tooth and claw, to crush the souls that were within the sacred circle. The picture had, he knew, been an allegory; he wondered if it were not possible that certain scenes in Nature might be equally allegorical. He hoped that he was not offending when he thought of this citadel of his faith—this pulpit from which he had first preached in Cornwall—being assailed by the emissaries of the Arch-enemy, and jet remaining unmoved as a tower built to withstand every assault of the foe.
The whole scene assumed in his imagination a series of fierce assaults, in all of which the enemy was worsted and sent flying over the plain; he could hear the shrieks of the disappointed fiends—the long wail of the wounded that followed every impulse; and then, after a brief interval, there came the renewed assault—the circling tumult seeking for a vulnerable point of entrance. But there it stood, that pulpit from whose height he had preached the Gospel to the thousands who had come to hear him, and had gone forth to join the forces that are evermore at conflict with the powers of evil in the world, There stood his pulpit unmoved in the midst of the tumult. He accepted the symbolism, and he was lifted up by the hope that his work sent forth from this place would live untouched by the many conflicts of time.
He was able to speak encouraging words to his companion every time the thunder passed away; and he was more than ever conscious of the happiness of having her near to him at this time. He knew that he had loved her truly; for his love had been true enough and strong enough to compel him to give her the advice that precluded his ever being able to tell her of his own feeling for her. The joy of her gracious companionship was not for him; but he would do all that in him lay to assure her happiness.
He knew that he was able to soothe her now that she had received a shock that would have been too much for most women. The horror of the mode of the man's death, quite apart from the terror of the tempest, was enough to prostrate any ordinary man or woman. It was very sweet to him to feel her cling to his arm when they crawled back to their shelter. He laid his hand tenderly upon the hand that clasped him, and he refrained from saying a word to her at that moment. When the storm had moderated in some measure he spoke to her; and he was too wise to make any attempt to turn her thoughts from the tragedy which, he knew, could not possibly fade from her mind even with the lapse of years.
“He predicted truly so far as he himself was concerned,” he said gravely. “The end came for him as he said. Poor wretch! He may have possessed all his life a curious sense beyond that allowed to others—an instinct—it may not have been finer than the instinct of a bird. I have read that one of the desert birds will fly an hundred miles to where a camel has fallen by the way. The camel itself has, we are told, an instinct that guides it to water. But I do not say that he was not an agent of evil. There is evidence to prove that sorcery can give the power to predict what seems to be the truth, but it is only a juggling of the actual truth. The manner of that poor wretch's death makes one feel suspicious. He predicted the end of the world; well, the world came to an end, so far as he was concerned. You perceive the jugglery? But his was a weak mind. He may have been lured on to his own destruction. However this may be, his end was a terrible one. I grieve that it was left for us to witness it.”