'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I felt sure it was a call from the grave, and I knelt on the sands and prayed. Henry, Henry, don't go in the church to-night.'
That Winifred's words affected me profoundly I need not say. The shriek, whatever it was, had been responded to by her soul and by mine in the same mysterious way. But the important thing to do was to prevent her from imagining that her superstitious terrors had affected me.
'Really, Winnie,' I said, 'this double-voiced shriek of yours, which is at once the shriek of the Welshman at the bottom of the swollen falls and the Celtic call from the grave, is the most dramatic shriek I ever heard of. It would make its fortune on the stage. But with all its power of being the shriek of two different people at once, it must not prevent my going into the church to do my duty; so we had better part here at this very spot. You go up the cliffs by Needle Point, and I will take Flinty Point gangway.'
'But why not ascend the cliffs together?' said Winifred.
'Why, the prying coastguard might be passing, and might wonder to see us in the churchyard on the night of my father's funeral (he might take us for two ghosts in love, you know). However, we need not part just yet. We can walk on a little farther into the cove before our paths diverge.'
Winifred made no demur, though she looked puzzled, as we were then much nearer to the gangway I had selected for myself than to the gangway I had allotted to her.
IX
Winifred and I were in the little horseshoe curve called 'Church Cove,' but also called sometimes 'Mousetrap Cove,' because, as I have already mentioned, a person imprisoned in it by the tide could only escape by means of a boat from the sea.
Needle Point was at one extremity of the cove and Flinty Point at the other. In front of us, therefore, at the very centre of the cliff that surrounded the cove, was the old church, which I was to reach as soon as possible. To reach a gangway up the cliff it was necessary to pass quite out of the cove, round either Flinty Point or Needle Point; for the cliff within the cove was perpendicular, and in some parts actually overhanging.
When we reached the softer sands near the back of the cove, where the walking was difficult, I bade Winifred good-night, and she turned somewhat demurely to the left on her way to Needle Point, between which and the spot where we now parted she would have to pass below the church on the cliff, and close by the great masses of debris from the new landslip that had fallen from the churchyard. This landslip (which had taken place since she had left home for her moonlight walk) had changed the shape of the cove into a figure something like the Greek epsilon.