The man’s lips became white with fear, and he faltered—
“If—if you will not give it me—take it away—out of my sight with it. It makes my blood curdle in my veins, and a cold perspiration hangs upon my brow. Curses! Curses! That I should have come thus far to be so tortured.”
“Nay,” said the smith, in a tone of sneering exultation, “you shall be convinced. Look at that name upon the blood-stained haft.”
“Away! Away, with it,” shrieked the stranger, covering his eyes with his hands.
“Joseph Gray!” said Britton, reading the name on the knife. “Ha! Ha! Master Gray, is not this a damning evidence?”
“Away! I say—oh, God, take it away.”
“Nay, your curiosity shall be amply satisfied,” continued the smith, approaching his mouth closer to the ear of him who we shall henceforth call Gray. “It was a week before I—even I, savage Britton, as they call me, ventured to unbar that door, and when I did it was at midnight.”
Gray shook with emotion and groaned deeply.
“I knew the spot,” continued Britton, and he lowered his voice to a whisper, while deep sighs of anguish burst from the labouring breast of his listener. The snow pattered against the windows of the smithy—a howling wind swept round the ruined pile of building, and not more wild and awful was the winter’s storm without than the demoniac passions and fearful excitement of those two men of blood who conversed in anxious whispers in the Old Smithy, until the grey tints of morning began to streak with sober beauty the eastern sky.