“They told me then that the grave had long since received its tenant, and by degrees I learned from them that my lover—my husband in the sight of Heaven, had been found a mangled corpse at the foot of a deep precipice.
“He must have fallen over, they told me, but I knew better; something whispered to me that Andrew Britton did the deed.
“Since then I know not what has happened. Once I awoke and found myself chained to a stone wall in a gloomy cell; then again I was thrust out from somewhere, and a voice told me to be gone, for I was harmless. So I became Mad Maud as I am, and I follow Britton the Savage Smith, because he is to die before I do, and then I shall meet my lover again—and do you know that some sunset, by the great bounty of Heaven, he will come again—when the murder is found out; yes, yes, when the murder is found out. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Again the maniac’s eye glanced with the wild fire of insanity, and poor Maud was lost once more in the wanderings of her imagination.
The sympathies of Ada had been so strongly excited by the narrative of poor Maud that she had allowed the lucid interval of the poor maniac to pass away without questioning on the subjects nearest and dearest to her. With a hope that even yet it might not be too late to glean some information from her, she said,—
“What murder do you mean?”
“The murder at the Old Smithy,” replied Maud. “You saw the man as well I—we all saw him.”
“When was that?” asked Ada.
“Last night! Last night! Hark, the wind is still around the Old Smithy.”
“’Tis all in vain,” sighed Ada. “The time is past.”