"Father lent it to me," said Walter, apparently in much torment, "to shoot the bird."
"And how came the pistol to go off as it did?"
"I was raising it to shoot one, a big fellow he was, and my elbow knocked again that there piece of sticking-out wall in the corner. Oh, doctor! I'm feeling rare and faint again."
Mr. Parker desisted from his investigation and went away whistling, taking in just as much as he liked of the story, and no more. There was evidently some mystery in the matter that he could not fathom.
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
ONE MORE INTERVIEW.
Mr. and Mrs. Bent were in their sitting-room, facing the sea, as many guests around them as the room could conveniently accommodate. Much excitement prevailed: every tongue was going.
Upon the occasion of any unusual commotion at Greylands, the Dolphin, being the only inn in the place, was naturally made the centre point of the public, where expressions of marvel were freely given vent to and opinions exchanged.
Since the disappearance of Anthony Castlemaine, no event had occurred to excite the people like unto this--the shooting himself of young Walter Dance. To the primitive community this affair seemed nearly as unaccountable as that. The bare fact of the pistol's having gone off through the young man's inadvertently knocking his elbow against that bit of projecting wall, sticking itself out in the corner of the chapel ruins, was nothing extraordinary; it might have happened to anybody; but the wonder manifested lay in the attendant circumstances.
After the stir and bustle of seeing Walter Dance conveyed from the Grey Nunnery to his home had somewhat subsided, and the litter with its bearers, and the patient, and the doctor had fairly disappeared within doors, and they were barred out, the attendant spectators stayed a few minutes to digest the sight, and then moved off slowly by twos and threes to the Dolphin. The privileged among them went into Mr. and Mrs. Bent's room: the rest stayed outside. Marvel the first was, that young Dance should have gone out to shoot a bird at that uncanny hour of the morning; marvel the second was, that he should have chosen that haunted place, the chapel ruins, for nobody had evinced more fear in a silent way of the superstitions attending the Keep and the ghost that walked there than Walter Dance; marvel the third was, that he should have taken a pistol to shoot at the sea-bird, instead of a gun.