Dr. Sitwell heard her also, and at once officiously replied: "Oh, but it is, my lady; there has no man died in Fairburn for these thirty years, except the late baronet, who could have owned those bones. I will pledge my professional reputation that yonder man, when clothed in flesh and blood, was six feet four. What a large skull, and what gigantic thigh-bones!"
"Ay," quoth Mr. Remnant, the general dealer, who was kneeling down beside the skeleton and examining it with minuteness, as though it had been offered to him for sale, "here is something hard and dry, with iron nails upon it, which was once a shooting-shoe, one of a pair, or I am much mistaken, which I sold to Sir Massingberd myself."
"And, here," quoth Jem Meyrick, stepping forward, "is summat as I think must have been the Squire's great gold chain, which I found at the bottom of the trunk. The Wolsey Oak is quite hollow, Sir Marmaduke, although none of us knew it. It is my belief that Sir Massingberd must have climbed up into the fork to look about him, for he seemed to be expecting poachers on that night, and that the rotten wood gave way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."
Without doubt, this was the true explanation of the matter. The skeleton was found with the arms above the head, a position which had precluded self-extrication, although it was evident that the wretched man had made great efforts to escape from his living tomb, since what remained of the shoe of the right foot was much turned up, and retained deep marks of the pressure of the buckle. As I looked at these relics of humanity, the gipsy's curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness: "May he perish, inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him into his hand."
It was a singular feature in the case, and one which was of course made to point its moral among the villagers, that had Sir Massingberd not closed the Park, and refused the right of way, he could scarcely have thus miserably perished, since the footpath, as I have said, absolutely skirted the tree in question; and people would have passed close by it at all hours. It reminded me of the evil fate of James I. of Scotland, who might have escaped his murderers in the Blackfriar's Abbey at Perth, but for the simple fact that he had caused the mouth of a certain vault to be bricked up, because his tennis-balls were wont to roll through it. How long the wretched Squire had suffered before Death released him from his fangs, it was impossible to guess, or whether that terrible cry heard by Dick Westlock that same night, and by myself next morning, was indeed from the throat of Sir Massingberd in his agony.
We were the two persons who had been nearest to the Wolsey Oak between the period of his entombment and the search instituted throughout the Chase. He must have been dead before that, for the seekers passed close beside the tree without the least suspicion of the ghastly Thing it held; unless, indeed, he had heard our voices, but, choked by that time: by the falling dry-rot, was unable to reply. No wonder the ravens had sought the Wolsey Oaky and croaked forth Doom therefrom so long!
CHAPTER XIX.
L'ENVOI.
Weeks elapsed before Marmaduke Heath recovered from the shock of this discovery; but when he once began to do so, he grew up to be quite another man in body and mind.