The little old woman smiled mirthlessly. For folk accounted her sharp of tongue and hard of heart, and she would never have done as much for any but a Wayne of Marsh House. Silence fell once again on the belfry tower, broken only by the click-click of the needles, the creak of the rope, the subdued thunder of the bell, the wailing frenzy of the wind as it drove the hailstones against the black old walls.
Eerie as the night was in the belfry, it was wilder yet in the bleak kirkyard without, free to the moor as it was, and full of corners where the wind hid itself to pipe a shriller note than it could compass in the open. The wind, a moon three-quarters full, a sky close packed with rain and sleet, fought hard together; and now the moon gained a moment's victory, shimmering ghostly grey across the wet tombstones; and now the scudding wrack prevailed, hiding the moon outright. The sodden winter leaves were lifted from the mould, and danced to the tune of the raindrops pattering upward from the tombstones.
A figure crossed the moor and halted awhile at the church-yard gate—a slim figure, of a lissom strength and upright carriage which marked her as a Wayne of Marsh House. Like a sapling ash the girl had swayed and bent to the hurricane as she fought her way through the storm; but all that the wind could do it had done, and had left her unbroken—breathless only, and glad of the gate's support for a moment.
The moon drove through the cloud-wrack as she stood there, lighting each shadowed hollow of her face. There was tenderness in her eyes, but tears were drawn like a veil across them; there was softness in the mouth, but pride and resolve hid all save the sterner lines. She turned her head quickly toward the belfry as the clang of the death-bell struck through the storm-din of the larger strife; and then she hid her face in her two strong hands, and sobbed as wildly as ever the wind could do. And after that she went forward, through the gate, up the narrow path, past the great stone, with the iron rings on either side, which hid the burial vault of the Waynes.
"Not there, father! They will never leave you out there for ever," she whispered—"you who were so strong yesterday, so full of the warmth of life. God, God, if You were made after our fashion, as men say, You would raise him from the dead. How the blood dripped, dripped from the little hole in his side. Oh, God, be merciful! Say that the wind has blown my wits away—say that all this is——"
She checked herself. Her passion died out, leaving her bitterly calm as the graves she lingered by.
"Nay, there is no mercy, nor shall be," said she.
"No mercy—no mercy," yelled the wind, as it howled across the moor and in through the kirkyard hedge.
The girl was comforted in some sort, it seemed, by the tempest's devilry. She turned from the vault and moved with a firm step to the foot of the church-tower; one hand had stolen to her girdle, and as the bell's note shuddered down the wind-beats once again, her fingers tightened round the knife-hilt.
"A drear neet for th' owd Maister," the Sexton's wife was crooning to herself, as she knitted her stocking in the belfry tower above. "'Tis a cold journey an' a long he's bound for, an' he'll feel th' lack o' flesh-warmth; ay, poor body! I could hev wished his soul fairer weather."