Such abject terror never have I heard before nor since in the utterance of any living man.
"Do you see This?" he said. "See what fell at my feet as I came through the arch of the Bow upon mine errand! The wind brought it down."
Above the moon pushed her way upwards, fighting hard, breasting the cloud wrack like a labouring ship.
Her beams fell on the dark Thing in Wat Gordon's hand.
"Great God!" he shouted again, his eyes starting from their sockets, "IT IS MINE OWN FATHER'S HEAD!"
And above us the fitful, flying winds nichered and laughed like mocking fiends.
It was true. I that write, saw it plain. I held it in this very hand. It was the head of Sir John of Lochinvar, against whom, in the last fray, his own son had donned the war-gear. Grizzled, black, the snow cleaving ghastly about the empty eye-holes, the thin beard still straggling snow-clogged upon the chin—it was his own father's head that had fallen at Walter Gordon's feet, and which he now held in his hand.
Then I remembered, with a shudder of apprehension, his own words so lately spoken—"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my tryst to-night."
Walter Gordon stood rooted there, dazed and dumb-foundered, with the Thing in his hand. His fine lace ruffles touched it as the wind blew them.
I plucked at him.