"The owl shrieked, the fatal bellman
Which gives the sternest good night."
Suddenly, as Grasp glanced upon that will, he became, as it were, transfixed. At the same moment a sort of hubbub seemed to pervade the house. In place of the silence which the sick Earl had commanded there was suddenly heard an opening and shutting of doors—a summons of persons in all haste, and something apparently of dreadful import in agitation.
Grasp, however, heeded it not. He seemed still engrossed with the parchment before him. He held it back at arm's length; he drew it close to his nose; he uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and the word "codicil" escaped, as one of the domestics rushed into tho room to announce that the Earl was dying in fearful agony.
Without heeding the news, Grasp fled from the room, rushed to the stable, mounted his horse, and rode off for Oxford. With the will still in his hand, the excited lawyer dismounted from his steed, and strode into the tavern, where, heeding not the assembled guests, he threw himself into a vacant seat, with the air of one possessed by a demon. And, again, with fearful eye, regarded the instrument he hold in his hand.
"Can such things be?" he said. "Can the dead return to life, or is it the evil one himself who thus palters with my sight and senses?"
The tavern was on this night tolerably well filled with guests. One of them, who was seated opposite to the lawyer, was a person of a most expressive and pleasant style of countenance. His conversation and wit had indeed been setting the whole assemblage, gentle and simple, in roars, during the entire evening—the host and hostess of the tavern being not the least amused.
The advent of Grasp in his perturbed state, his extraordinary grimaces, his abstracted demeanour, and his travel-stained appearance altogether, called forth from this person so many curious remarks, that the laughter which had for the moment been interrupted by his entrance was renewed tenfold at Grasp's expense, till, as on unfixing his gaze from the basilisk he seemed to hold in his hand, he looked round upon the assemblage, and then steadily regarded his tormentor, he beheld himself face to face with the old subject of his former enmity—Master William Shakespeare.
"There is no rest for the wicked," saith the old proverb; and the renewed roar which followed the expression of Grasp's countenance at this sudden recognition, was actually driving him from the room, when Doubletongue, who had followed his friend, suddenly entered, and whispered something in his ear.
"Poisoned say ye?" exclaimed Grasp, starting in surprise; "my Lord of Leicester deceased—dead—defunct, and thus suddenly? Poisoned, say ye? Art sure 'tis the Countess you mean?"
"No, 'tis the Earl himself," said Doubletongue; "and your having been with him just before, together with your sudden departure, hath raised a suspicion among the household that——"