But it was no delirious delusion of Roland's that he had seen a human face, or heard a human voice respond mockingly to his despairing cry for aid.
It singularly chanced that about an hour before midnight, and during a lull in the storm, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who—as we have said—had been seen hovering about the vicinity of Earlshaugh, was betaking himself thither, intent on seeing his sister, the mistress thereof (whom he also deemed his banker) concerning some of his monetary affairs, and had been passing on foot by the narrow sheep-path that skirted the verge of the dangerous Cleugh, when the occasional cries of the sufferer reached his ear, and on peering down he had speedily discovered by his voice who that sufferer was.
He paused for a minute till quite assured of the fact, and though at a loss to conceive how the event had come to pass, he proceeded with quickened steps for some miles, till he reached the private entrance—for which he had a key—but not for the purpose of raising an alarm, or procuring or sending forth succour. Of that he had not the least intention, as we shall show. 'In the place where the tree falleth, there let it lie,' was the text of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe just then.
He found the entire household on the qui vive, and heard that Roland Lindsay was missing, thus corroborating to the fullest extent any detail that might be wanting, and obviating all doubt as to the episode at the Cleugh.
'What a fuss,' said he mockingly, 'about a storm of rain!'
It now rested with him, by the utterance of a single word, or little more, to save the missing one from a miserable and lingering death; but that word remained unuttered, and with a grim and mocking smile upon his coarse lips, and a gleam of fiendish joy in his watery gray eyes, he proceeded to his sanctum, up the old turret stair, without the sensation of his steps going downward according to the household tradition.
'Lindsay lost in this storm!' he thought. 'How came he to tumble or to be thrown down there—thrown, by whom?' he added mentally, for his mind was ever prone to evil. 'Then I am not wrong—it was his voice I heard at the bottom of the Kelpie's Cleugh! Ha! ha! let him lie there till the greedy gleds pick his bones to pieces! Well—come what may, I have had no hand in this!' he continued, thinking doubtless of the charge of No. 5 aimed at Captain Elliot.
Roland had often goaded Hawkey to the verge of madness by his cool, haughty bearing and unassailable scorn, even at times when the latter secretly amused him by the 'society' airs he strove to assume; but Hawkey's time for vengeance seemed to have come unexpectedly and all unsought for; and in fancy still he seemed to glare gloatingly down into the dark chasm where the pale sufferer lay in his peril, doubtless with many a bone broken, and the waters of the burn rising fast, for the rain was falling in torrents, and there was a spate in all the mountain streams.
Hawkey threw off his soaked coat, invested his figure in a loose, warm robe de chambre, and took a bottle of his favourite 'blend' from his private cellarette, after which he threw himself into an easy-chair, with his feet upon another, and strove to reflect.
'I always thought, if I could get rid of that fellow Lindsay by fair means or foul, this place would certainly be mine, unless Deb plays the fool—mine! The girl in my way is nothing, yet I may have her too, and if not, the other one with the yellow hair. After what I saw by a gleam of the Macfarlanes' lantern to-night, the way seems pretty clear now!'