All at once Tom became conscious of a slight, dark-robed figure, and a woman’s voice broke the silence, calling swiftly, softly:
“Drive me to Yorke Towers at once. Quick, quick! Lose no time!”
Then the dark-robed figure stepped swiftly, noiselessly—“jes’ like a ghos’!” so poor Tom was wont to declare—into the carriage, and the door was shut.
Tom gathered up his reins obediently, and turned his horses’ heads about. But at that moment a stinging blow descended upon his head; heaven and earth seemed to come together with a shock. Some one, or something—for Tom afterward described the apparition as a tall black man, with fiery eyes and a tail; in fact, a veritable Satan—seized him in an iron grip, and he felt himself descending rapidly earthward. Another concussion, as something struck him upon the head and chest, then darkness—the very blackness of darkness—gathered over him, and Tom knew no more.
Prone upon the ground, under the clump of oaks, he lay until he was rescued later on by Doctor Danton and Dunbar.
In the meantime, the tall dark figure that had pursued Rosamond Arleigh from the grounds of The Oaks and into the carriage had mounted on the box in Tom’s place, and was driving Doctor Danton’s horses like mad—but not in the direction of Yorke Towers.
CHAPTER VIII.
“MY DARK-EYED WILL!”
When Leonard Yorke reached home after the tragic occurrence at The Oaks, he was met in the hall by Jessie Glyndon. She was very pale, and her eyes bore the traces of recent weeping.