“You haven’t yet told me his name?”
“Rogier—Father Rogier. So he is called upon the Wye.”
“And, supposing him identified, what follows?”
“A great deal follows, or rather depends on his identification.”
“Explain, Ryecroft. I shall listen with patience.”
Ryecroft does explain, continuing his narrative into a second chapter, which includes the doings of the Jesuit on Wyeside, so far as known to him; the story of Jack Wingate’s love and loss—the last so strangely resembling his own—the steps afterwards taken by the waterman; in short, everything he can think of that will throw light upon the subject.
“A strange tale, truly!” observes the Major, after hearing it to the end. “But does your boatman really believe the priest has resuscitated his dead sweetheart and brought her over here with the intention of of shutting her up in a nunnery?”
“He does all that; and certainly not without show of reason. Dead or alive, the priest or some one else has taken the girl out of her coffin, and her grave.”
“’Twould be a wonderful story, if true—I mean the resuscitation, or resurrection; not the mere disinterment of a body. That’s possible, and probable where priests of the Jesuitical school are concerned. And so should the other be, when one considers that they can make statues wink, and pictures shed tears. Oh! yes; Ultramontane magicians can do anything!”
“But why,” asks Ryecroft, “should they have taken all this trouble about a poor girl—the daughter of a small Herefordshire farmer,—with possibly at the most a hundred pounds, or so, for her dowry? That’s what mystifies me!”