The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

He worked attentively and rapidly, his thoughts meanwhile as busy as his hands. The moon gave him almost as much light as he would have had by day: though it cast dark shades as well as brightness; and that would make the chief beauty of the completed painting.

Somewhere about a week had passed since the accident to Walter Dance, and the young man was three parts well again.

The occurrence had rarely been out of Mr. North's mind since. He had taken the opportunity in an easy and natural manner of calling in at Dance's to pay a visit to the invalid, to inquire after his progress and condole with him; and he that been struck during that interview with the same idea that had come to him before--namely, that the story told was not real. Putting a searching question or two, his eyes intently fixed upon the wounded man's countenance, he was surprised--or, perhaps not surprised--to see the face flush, the eyes turn away, the answering words become hesitating. Nothing, however, came of it, save this impression. Walter parried every question, telling the same tale that he had told others; but the eyes of the speaker, I say, could not look Mr. North in the face, the ring of the voice was not true. Mr. North asked this and that; but he could not ask too pointedly or persistently, his apparent motive being concern for the accident, slightly tempered with curiosity.

"It was not the ghost of the Grey Friar that shot you, was it?" he questioned at last with a joking smile. Walter evidently took it in earnest, and shook his head gravely.

"I never saw the ghost at all, sir, that night: nor thought of it, either. I was only thinking of the bird."

"You did not get the bird, after all."

"No; he flew away when the pistol went off. It startled him, I know: you should have heard his wings a-flapping. Father says he'll shoot one the first opportunity he gets."

How much was false, and how much true, Mr. North could not discern. So far as the bird went, he was inclined to believe in it--Walter must have had some motive for going to the ruins, and, he fancied, a very strong one. It was the shot itself and the hour of its occurrence that puzzled him. But Mr. North came away from the interview no wiser than he had entered on it: except that his doubts were strengthened.

As if to give colouring to, and confirm his son's story, a day or two subsequent to the accident, Tom Dance, being in the company of some other fishermen at the time, and having his gun with him, aimed at a large grey sea-gull that came screeching over their heads, as they stood on the beach, and brought him down. The next morning, in the face and eyes of all Greylands, he went marching off with the dead bird to Stilborough, and left it with a naturalist to be stuffed: and pedestrians passing the naturalist's shop, were regaled with a sight of Le great bird exhibited there, its wings stretched out to the uttermost. But it turned out upon inquiry--far people, swayed by their curiosity, made very close inquiries, and seemed never to tire of doing it--that the bird had not been ordered by the gentleman at Stilborough, as Walter Dance was at first understood to say. Dance and his son had intended to make a present of one to him. As they would now do.

All these matters, with the various speculations they brought in their train, were swaying Mr. North's mind, as he worked on this evening by moonlight. The occurrence had certainly spurred up his intention to discover Anthony's fate, rendering him more earnest in the pursuit. It could not be said that he was not earnest in it before; but there was nothing he could lay hold of, nothing tangible. In point of fact, there was not anything now.