"Let us go back," said I; "come back, my good sir, I conjure you. Such a man should be left to God, to punish in His own good time."
"Hark!" cried Rodney, pulling up, and listening through the gloomy wood; "that was a woman's scream, I am sure. Is he murdering some more little ones?"
We listened, and heard a loud piercing shriek, that made our hair stand on end almost, so mad was it, and so unearthly; and then two more of yet wilder agony; and after that a long low wailing.
"On, on!" cried Rodney Bluett; "you know these paths, gallop on, Davy."
"You go first," I answered; "your horse is fresher; I am coming—to be sure I am—do you think I am frightened?"
"Well, I don't know," he replied; "but I am not ashamed to own that I am."
Clapping spurs to his horse, he dashed on; and thoroughly miserable as I felt, there was nothing for me but to follow him.
In the name of the Lord, what a sight we came on, where the drive sweeps round at the corner of the house! Under a dark tree of some sort, and on a garden bench, we discovered the figures of two women. Or rather, one sate on the bench; the other lay stretched on the ground, with her head cast recklessly back on the ledge, her hair spread in masses over it, and both hands pressed on her eyes and ears, to shut out sight and hearing. Her lips were open, and through her white teeth came wails of anguish, that would have been shrieks, if nature had not failed her.
But the elder woman sate upright, in scorn of all such weakness, with her gaunt figure drawn like a cable taut, no sign of a tear on her shrunken cheeks, and the whole of her face as numb and cold as an iced figure-head in the Arctic seas. Yet no one, with knowledge of the human race, could doubt which of these two suffered most.
We reined up our horses, and gazed in terror, for neither of them noticed us; and then we heard, from inside the house, sounds that made our flesh creep. Barking, howling, snapping of teeth, baying as of a human bloodhound, frothy splutterings of fury, and then smothered yelling.