What was that? Some ghostly warning for or against his plots?—or was he so distempered by his broodings that this was but the coining of imagination?
“Tap! tap! tap!”
There it was again, and for a moment a strange sense of terror pervaded him, and he could not stir. But only for a moment; the next minute a feeling of grim satisfaction prevailed. This, then, was to be a night of enlightenment—here was a new revelation—this, then, was the means of communication? Evidently some mistake of the bearer, and he had but to go to the window, stretch forth his hand, and take a letter; or—the thought sent a thrill through him as he stepped forward—was it the keeping of an assignation? The window was many feet above the ground, and if he dashed back the ladder—
He paused, for there was the slight darkening of the blind as if a shadow were passing over it, and now, half-mad with rage, Sir Murray Gernon felt that all his suspicions were confirmed, as, springing forward, he tore the blind aside, just as again, loudly and distinctly, came the blows upon the glass.
End of Volume I.
Nocturnal.
“Perhaps, after all, it’s just as weel that he did not come,” mused Alexander McCray, as he stood one morning upon the long wooden bridge which connected, at the narrowest part, the two shores of the fine piece of water lying between the park of Merland Castle and the pleasure-grounds. He was leaning over the rail, and gazing down into the clear depths below, where, screened by the broad leaves of the water-lilies, which here and there bore some sweet white chalice, the huge carp were floating lazily, now and then giving a flip with their broad tails to send themselves a few feet through the limpid medium in which they dwelt.
“Perhaps, after all, it’s just as weel that he did not come any more, but if he had, I would have pitched him in here as freely as have looked at him, and he wouldn’t have hurt neither—a bad chiel. Them that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned, and he’ll come to the gallows sure enough, and deserves it, too, for ill-using that poor bairn as he did.”
“Weel, this winna do,” he said, starting from his reverie, and shouldering the broom with which he had been sweeping the bridge. “I’ll just e’en go and do the paths under the bedroom windows; the lassie might happen to give a look out.”