No avail.
"And what took ye out so soon after he was awa'?"
No reply.
"And what's mair"—the murder was now out,—"did ye no meet him secretly at the stair-foot, and stand and speak to him in strange words and strange signs?"
Not yet.
"And what, in the name o' Heaven, and a' the ither powers up and down and round and round, was the aith that ye swore to him?"
Another pause.
"And what money-bribe was it ye spak o' sae secretly and darkly?"
All in vain. At length the knurr of the clock, and the most solemn of all the hours, "one," sounded hoarsely. Wearied, exhausted, and sorely troubled, Geordie fell asleep, greatly aided thereto by the eternal oscillation of that little tongue at the back of the greater and mute one, the sound of which ceased when the blacksmith was fairly and certainly over, just as if its services had been no longer needed that night.
Surely the next of these eventful days was destined, either by the Furies or the good goddess, to be that day that "would try a'." Even these words Geordie had heard, if he had not caught up many other broken sentences, which showed to his distracted mind that guidwife Christian was in some mysterious way mixed up with the events and things of the charmed house. The comparatively sleepless night induced a later than usual rising; but with what wonder did Geordie Gourlay ascertain, that late as Christian had been out on the previous night, she was already again forth of the house, leaving him to the bachelor work of making his own breakfast! Where she had gone he could not even venture to suppose; but certain he was that her absence was in some way connected with that stranger with whom he had seen her in communication the night before. The business did not admit of his waiting; so he took his morning meal of porridge and milk, and with thoughts anxious and deep, yet deeper in mere feeling than portrayment of outward coming events, he sallied forth for the Luckenbooths. On descending the stair, he found to his dire amazement the door of the portentous flat—that grave above ground of so many things that should have been either under the earth, in the sinless regions of mortality, or in the mendicant bag of Time, rolled away beyond the ken of mortal—open. Yes, that door, with the rusty padlock, and the creaking hinge, and the worm-eaten panels, was open. He shuddered: yet he looked ben into the old dark lobby, where he had groped and so nearly lost himself; and what did he see? His wife, guidwife Christian, standing in the middle thereof in her white short-gown, so like, to his imperfect vision, that spirit he had encountered in that house before! There seemed to be others there also; for he heard inside doors creaking, and by and by saw come out of the far-end door that very man—yea, the very man. The reflection of a light shone out upon him. To escape observation, he slipt to a side; and when he peered in again, no one was to be seen. They had passed together into some of the rooms, probably that bedroom where stood the bed with the green curtains. Resolved as he had been never to enter that door-way again, he would have rushed forward, had not a hand been laid on his shoulder.