The forest was very still,—it was steeped in quietness. The rustling of the dry leaves under the feet of the woman was all she heard, except when the low sighing of the wind, the sharp bark of a fox, or the shriek of an owl, broke the silence for a moment, and all was again still.
The woman looked watchfully around as she glided onwards. The path was known to her, but not so familiarly as to prevent the necessity of stopping every few minutes to look about her and make sure she was right.
It was long since she had travelled that way, and she was looking for a landmark—a gray stone that stood somewhere not far from where she was, and near which she knew that there was a footpath that led, not directly to the Château, but to the old deserted watch-tower of Beaumanoir.
That stone marked a spot not to be forgotten by her, for it was the memorial of a deed of wickedness now only remembered by herself and by God. La Corriveau cared nothing for the recollection. It was not terrible to her, and God made no sign; but in his great book of account, of which the life of every man and woman forms a page, it was written down and remembered.
On the secret tablets of our memory, which is the book of our life, every thought, word, and deed, good or evil, is written down indelibly and forever; and the invisible pen goes on writing day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, every thought, even the idlest, every fancy the most evanescent: nothing is left out of our book of life which will be our record in judgment! When that book is opened and no secrets are hid, what son or daughter of Adam is there who will not need to say, “God be merciful?”
La Corriveau came suddenly upon the gray stone. It startled her, for its rude contour, standing up in the pale moonlight, put on the appearance of a woman. She thought she was discovered, and she heard a noise; but another glance reassured her. She recognized the stone, and the noise she had heard was only the scurrying of a hare among the dry leaves.
The habitans held this spot to be haunted by the wailing spirit of a woman in a gray robe, who had been poisoned by a jealous lover. La Corriveau gave him sweatmeats of the manna of St. Nicholas, which the woman ate from his hand, and fell dead at his feet in this trysting-place, where they met for the last time. The man fled to the forest, haunted by a remorseful conscience, and died a retributive death: he fell sick, and was devoured by wolves. La Corriveau alone of mortals held the terrible secret.
La Corriveau gave a low laugh as she saw the pale outline of the woman resolve itself into the gray stone. “The dead come not again!” muttered she, “and if they do she will soon have a companion to share her midnight walks round the Château!” La Corriveau had no conscience; she knew not remorse, and would probably have felt no great fear had that pale spirit really appeared at that moment, to tax her with wicked complicity in her murder.
The clock of the Château struck twelve. Its reverberations sounded far into the night as La Corriveau emerged stealthily out of the forest, crouching on the shady side of the high garden hedges, until she reached the old watch-tower, which stood like a dead sentinel at his post on the flank of the Château.
There was an open doorway, on each side of which lay a heap of fallen stones. This was the entrance into a square room, dark and yawning as a cavern. It was traversed by one streak of moonshine, which struggled through a grated window set in the thick wall.