He had not touched her, for in his surprise it seemed possible, after Mother Goodhugh’s words, that the woman he loved had come back from the dead, but still his common sense revolted, while his eyes asserted that it was true.
As he spoke Mace rose upright again, but without removing her hand from her eyes, and Gil saw that her long hair was grey as that of some venerable dame; that the slight garment she wore was ragged, and that her fingers were torn and bleeding fast.
He could not tell what it meant; how she came to be there; but the idea of the supernatural was cleared away, and, making an effort over his slavish dread, he caught the disengaged hand in his.
It was like ice, but his touch broke the spell, for, with a piteous cry, Mace tottered and would have fallen had not Gil caught her in his arms.
She was deathly cold, and as he bore her to a spot where the soft turf was dotted with purple heather he saw that her eyelids were tightly closed, and her brow knit as if with pain; and, judging that the glow of sunshine caused her to suffer, he laid a kerchief across her eyes before clasping her icy hands and trickling a few drops of water between her lips.
A host of confusing thoughts rushed through his brain, the only substantial one he could grasp being that Mace must have gone to the cavern to seek him, and then have been shut in.
But this idea was driven away on the instant by an older recollection, one which made him groan in the anguish of his heart.
“My love is dead,” he panted. “Did not those hands lay her in her grave? God in heaven have mercy on me! Am I going mad?”
“Skipper,” whispered a voice at his side, and looking up he saw old Wat standing with dilated eyes, pointing down at the insensible figure. “Skipper,” the old fellow whispered hoarsely, “we bean’t cowards, but the old woman be a witch after all. Come away, come away!”
In his strange confusion of mind, Gil was for the moment ready to accept this theory, and he gazed down at the weird figure beside him, and then at Mother Goodhugh, where she lay. Was there really truth then in witchcraft, and had this old woman the power to recall the dead?