“Are you a man of blood? Let me see your hands. Are they stained with innocent gore, or free from the damning pollution that begrimes the fool, and drags it shrieking to despair. Answer me man. Saw ye ever the Old Smithy?”
“Give me the knife and I will tell you.”
“Yes, the knife! He is eager for the knife, who knows its use. Answer me: saw ye the fire—yes, the fire—when was it? Yesternight?”
“What fire?”
“In a house where dwelt an angel, I knew ’twas that—Yes! Ha! Ha! Ha! And there was a body too that would not burn. There it lay black and cold, untouched amidst the charred fragments of the house. I—I have been there to look for the angel, but she has flown up to her native skies, with not a downy feather of her radiant wings touched by the gross element.”
“You, you have been to the house?” stammered Gray.
“I have! You knew it? It lies near sweet green fields, and the merry birds mock you as you go it. Listen, and I will tell you what I did. The early dawn was brightening, and old and young with jests and laughter, and mingling voices, went to see the ruins of the ancient house.”
“And you went?”
“I did. Then some bright spades and hatchets, and they dug for the body of a murdered man. Pile after pile of the blackened rubbish was removed, and then one said,—‘he must be burnt to a cinder,’ but I knew he would be found, no murdered body was ever yet all burnt. The murderer himself has often tried thus to dissipate in the ashes of his victim, all traces of his awful crime, but Heaven will not have it so.”
Gray clutched to the railings for support as he said,—