"Teague went to the Dolphin later, but I had then left the inn. He said that when he heard the people commenting on the shot, instinct prompted him to take it on himself, and he there and then avowed that the report came from his own gun. The scream he denied in toto, insisting upon it that it was all fancy. Would it had been!"
"Would it had been!" echoed George with a groan.
"It was like a fate!" burst forth the Master of Greylands, breaking the distressing pause. "Like a fate, that I should have gone into the Keep that night by way of the chapel ruins. We always avoided that way of entrance and egress, to keep observation from it. Harry, I know, had used it more than he ought: it was so much more ready a way than going into Teague's and passing through the long passage: but I was always cautioning him. The young are careless."
"The ghost of the Grey Monk?" asked George. "Who personated him? Of course I can understand that the farce was kept up to scare the world from the Friar's Keep."
"Just so. The superstition already existed in the village, and we turned it to account. I recollect when I was a boy sundry old people testified to having been at odd times scared by the apparition at the windows of the Keep when they were passing it at night. We re-organised the ghost and caused him to show himself occasionally, procuring for the purpose a monk's dress, and a lamp emitting a pale blue flame by means of spirit and salt. Teague and Harry were the actors; sometimes one, sometimes the other. It was an element of fun in my poor boy's life."
Mr. Castlemaine rose with the last words. He had need of repose.
"I will see you again in the morning, George. Come to me at what hour you please, and I will introduce you to my wife by your true name. Greylands' Rest is yours, you know, now."
"I--but I do not wish you to go out of it, Uncle James," said George in his impulse of generosity.
"I shall be only too glad to get out of it as soon as may be," was the impressive answer. "Do you think I could bear to live in it now? Would to Heaven I had gone out of it before this fatal year! George," he added, with a gasp of agitation, "as I was walking home just now I asked myself whether the finger of God had not been at work. These illicit practices of mine caused the death of Anthony; I denied that death, concealed it, have attempted to ridicule it to the world: and now my own and only son has died the same miserable death; been shot down, perhaps, by the very selfsame pistol. It is retribution, lad."
"I wish I could comfort you!" whispered George.