I walked rapidly towards Flinty Point, which I should have to double before I could reach the gangway I was to take. So feverishly possessed had I become by the desire to prevent the sacrilege, if possible, that I had walked some distance away from Winifred before I observed how high the returning tide had risen in the cove.
When I now looked at Flinty Point, round which I was to turn, I saw that it was already in deep water, and that I could not reach the gangway outside the cove. It was necessary, therefore, to turn back and ascend by the gangway Winifred was making for, behind Needle Point, which did not project so far into the sea. So I turned back. As I did so, I perceived that she had reached the projecting mass of debris in the middle of the semicircle below the churchyard, and was looking at it. Then I saw her stoop, pick up what seemed a paper parcel, open it, and hold it near her face to trace out the letters by the moonlight. Then I saw her give a start as she read it. I walked towards her, and soon reached the landslip. Evidently what she read agitated her much. She seemed to read it and re-read it. When she saw me she put it behind her back, trying to conceal it from me.
'What have you picked up, Winifred?' I said, in much alarm; for my heart told me that it was in some way connected with her father and the shriek.
'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'I was in hopes you had not seen it. I am so grieved for you. This parchment contains a curse written in large letters. Some sacrilegious wretch has broken into the church and stolen a cross placed in your father's tomb.'
God!—It was the very same parchment scroll from my father's tomb on which was written the curse! I was struck dumb with astonishment and dismay. The whole terrible truth of the situation broke in upon me at one flash. The mysterious shriek was explained now. Wynne had evidently broken open the tomb as soon as his daughter was out of the way. He had then, in order to reach the cottage without running the risk of being seen by a chance passenger on the Wilderness Road, blundered about the edge of the cliff at the very moment when it was giving way, and had fallen with it. It was his yell of despair amid the noise of the landslip that Winifred and I had both heard. My sole thought was for Winifred. She had read the curse; but where was the dead body of her father that would proclaim upon whose head the curse had fallen? I stared around me in dismay. She saw how deeply I was disturbed, but little dreamed the true cause.
'Oh, Henry,' said she, 'to think that you should have such a grief as this; your dear father's tomb violated!' and she sat down and sobbed. 'But there is a God in heaven,' she added, rising with great solemnity. 'Whoever has committed this dreadful crime against God and man will rue the day he was born:—the curse of a dead man who has been really wronged no penance or prayer can cure,—so my aunt in Wales used to say, and so Sinfi says;—it clings to the wrongdoer and to his children. That cry I heard was the voice of vengeance, and it came from your father's tomb.'
'It is a most infamous robbery,' I said; 'but as to the curse, that
is of course as powerless to work mischief as the breath of a baby.'
And again I anxiously looked around to see where was the dead body of
Wynne, which I knew must be close by.
'Oh, Henry!' said she, 'listen to these words, these awful words of your dead father, and the words of the Bible too.'
And she held up to her eyes, as though fascinated by it, the parchment scroll, and read aloud in a voice so awe-struck that it did not seem to be her voice at all:
'He who shall violate this tomb,—he who shall steal this amulet, hallowed as a love-token between me and my dead wife,—he who shall dare to lay a sacrilegious hand upon this cross, stands cursed by God, cursed by love, and cursed by me, Philip Aylwin, lying here. "Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his fatherless children….Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread: let them seek it also out of desolate places."—Psalm cix. So saith the Lord. Amen.'