L I E> RA FLY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VERSITY 
 
 OF 1LLI NOIS 
 
 <523 
 D756w 
 

THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 31 ^Romance. 
 
 BY 
 
 EICHAED DOWLING, 
 
 AUTHOS 07 "THE MYSTERY OF KILLAHD." 
 
 In ^ hr.ee "Bohxmzs. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 
 
 1880. 
 [All rights reserved.'] 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, 
 GBEAT NEW STREET, LONDON. 
 
e«3 
 
 &7J~W 
 ■>. / 
 
 TO 
 
 EDMOND POWER, ESQ., 
 
 OF SPRINGFIELD, 
 
 SEhose kiribmss to ^ttns anb tu J&* 
 
 I SHALL NEVER FORGET 
 
 WHILE I AM. 
 
 "0 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Part &— % plain SolU ^uarB* 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. — A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR . 
 
 II. — A GENEROUS BANKER 
 III. — THE MANOR HOUSE 
 IV. — AN UNSELFISH MOTHER . 
 
 V. — AN UNSELFISH FATHER . 
 
 VI. — "TO THE ISLAND OR TO " 
 
 VII. — TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES 
 VIII. — WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT 
 IX. — A FLASK OF COGNAC 
 
 X. — ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH 
 XL — BY THE STATE BED. 
 
 1 
 
 24 
 
 47 
 69 
 99 
 123 
 148 
 174 
 194 
 216 
 235 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 PAET I. A PLAIN GOLD GUARD. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 
 
 Mr. Henry Walter Grey sat in his 
 dining-room sipping claret on the evening 
 of Monday, the 27th August, 1866. His 
 house was in the suburbs of the city of 
 Daneford. 
 
 Mr. Grey was a man of about forty- 
 five years of age, looking no more than 
 thirty -eight. He was tall, broad, without 
 the least tendency to corpulency, and yet 
 pleasantly rounded and full. There was 
 
 vol. i. 1 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 no angularity or harshness in his face or 
 figure. The figure was active looking 
 and powerful, the face open, joyous, and 
 benignant. , The hair had begun to thin 
 at his forehead ; this gave his face a 
 soothing expression of contented calm. 
 
 His forehead was broad and white; 
 his eyes were constant, candid, and kindly; 
 his nose was large, with quickly -mobile sen- 
 sitive nostrils; and his mouth well formed 
 and full, having a sly uptwist at one corner, 
 indicating strong sympathy with humour. 
 He wore neither beard nor moustache. 
 
 His complexion was bright without 
 being florid, fair without being white. His 
 skin was smooth as a young girl's cheek. 
 He stood six feet without his boots. He 
 was this evening in the deepest mourning 
 for his wife, whom he had lost on Friday, 
 the 17th of that month, August. 
 
 Although he occupied one of the most 
 important positions in Daneford, no person 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 3 
 
 who knew him, or had heard of him from a 
 Danefordian, ever called him either Henry 
 or Walter. He was universally known as 
 Wat Grey. Daneford believed him to be 
 enormously rich. He was the owner of 
 the Daneford Bank, an institution which 
 did a large business and held its head high. 
 
 Indeed, in Daneford it was almost 
 unnecesssary to add the banker's surname 
 to his Christian name ; and if anyone 
 said, " Wat did so-and-so," and you asked, 
 *' Wat who ? " the purveyor of the news 
 would know you for an alien or a nobody 
 in the city. 
 
 The young men worshipped him as 
 one of themselves, who, despite his gaiety 
 and lightheadedness, had prospered in the 
 world, and kept his youth and made 
 his money, and was one of themselves 
 still, and would continue to be one of 
 them as long as he lived. 
 
 Elder men liked him for the solid 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 prudence which guided all his business 
 transactions, and which, while it enabled 
 him to be with the young, allowed him 
 to exercise over his juniors in years the 
 influence of an equal combined with the 
 authority of experience. Lads of twenty 
 never thought of him as a fogey, and 
 men of thirty looked upon him as a 
 younger man, who had learned the folly 
 of vicious vanities very much sooner than 
 others ; and consequently they confided 
 in him, and submitted themselves to him 
 with docility. Young men assembled at 
 his house, but there were no orgies ; 
 elder men came, and went away cheered 
 and diverted, and no whit the less rich 
 or wise because discussions of important 
 matters had been enlivened with inter- 
 ludes of gayer discourse. 
 
 Wat Grey was one of the most 
 active men in Daneford. He was Chair- 
 man of the Chamber of Commerce, of 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 5 
 
 the Commercial Club, and of the 
 Harbour Board. 
 
 He was Vice-chairman of the Daneford 
 Boat Club, and Treasurer of the Poors 
 Christmas Coal Fund. 
 
 If he was rich, he was liberal. He 
 subscribed splendidly to all the local 
 charities, but never as a public man or 
 as owner of the Daneford Bank. What 
 he thought it wise to give he always 
 sent from "Wat," as though he prized 
 more highly the distinction of familiarity 
 his town had conferred upon him than 
 any conventional array of Christian and 
 surnames, or any title of cold courtesy 
 or routine right. It was not often 
 he dropped from his cheerful level of 
 high-spirited and rich animal enjoyment 
 into sentimentalism, but on one occasion 
 he said to young Feltoe : " I'd rather be 
 ' Wat ' to my friends than Sir Thingumbob 
 Oiggamarigs to all the rest of the world." 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 There was nothing Daneford could have 
 refused him. He had been mayor, and 
 could be Liberal member of Parliament 
 for the ancient and small constituency 
 any time he chose when the Liberal seat 
 was vacant. Daneford was one of those 
 constituencies which give one hand to one- 
 side and the other hand to the other, and 
 have no hand free for action. Walter 
 Grey had always declined the seat ; he 
 would say : 
 
 "I'm too young yet, far too young. 
 As I grow older, I shall grow wiser and 
 more corrupt. Then you can put me in y 
 and I shall have great pleasure in ratting 
 for a baronetcy. Ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 Of late, however, it had been rumoured 
 the chance of getting the rich banker to 
 consent to take the seat (this was the way 
 everyone put it) had increased, and that 
 he mio'ht be induced to stand at the next 
 vacancy. Then all who knew of his 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 7 
 
 personal qualities, his immense knowledge 
 of finance, and his large fortune, said that 
 if he chose he might be Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer in time ; and after his retirement 
 from business, and purchase of an estate, 
 the refusal of a peerage was certain to 
 come his way. 
 
 As he sat sipping his claret that 
 Monday evening of the 27th of August, 
 1866, his face was as placid as a secret 
 well. Whether he was thinking of his 
 dead wife and sorrowing for her, or 
 revolving the ordinary matters of his 
 banking business, or devising some scheme 
 for the reduction of taxation in the city, 
 or dallying mentally with the sirens who 
 sought to ensnare him in parliamentary 
 honours, could no more be gathered from 
 his face than from the dull heavy clouds 
 that hung low over the sultry land abroad. 
 
 It was not often he had to smoke his 
 after-dinner cigar and sip his after-dinner 
 
$ THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 claret alone ; men were always glad to dine 
 with him, and lie was always glad to have 
 them ; but the newness of his black clothes 
 and of the bands on his hats in the hall 
 accounted for the absence of guests. He 
 was not dressed for dinner. One of the 
 things which had made his table so free 
 and jovial was that a man might sit down 
 to it in a coat of any cut or colour, and 
 in top-boots and breeches if he liked. 
 Before his bereavement he would say : 
 
 " Mrs. Grey — although she may not sit 
 with us — has an antiquated objection to 
 a man dining in his shirt-sleeves. I have 
 often expostulated with her unreasonable 
 prejudice, but I can't get her to concede 
 no coat at all You may wear your hat 
 and your gloves if you like, but for 
 Heaven's sake come in a coat of some kind. 
 If you can't manage a coat, a jacket will 
 do splendidly." 
 
 Mrs. Grey never dined out. In fact, 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 9 
 
 •she saw little company ; tea was always 
 sent into the dining-room. 
 
 Mr. Grey had not got more than half- 
 way through his cigar on that evening of 
 the 27th of August when a servant knocked 
 and entered. 
 
 The master, whose face was towards 
 the window, turned round his head slowly, 
 and said in a kindly voice : 
 " Well, James, what is it 1 " 
 " A man, sir, wants to see you." 
 James was thick-set, low-sized, near- 
 sighted, and dull. He had been a private 
 soldier in a foot regiment, and had been 
 obliged to leave because of his increasing 
 near-sightedness. But he had been long 
 enough in uniform to acquire the accom- 
 plishment of strict and literal attention 
 to orders, and the complete suspension 
 of his own faculties of judgment and 
 discretion. Although his master was 
 .several inches taller than James, the latter 
 
10 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 looked in the presence of the banker like 
 a clumsy elephant beside an elegant 
 panther. 
 
 " A man wants to see me ! " cried Mr. 
 Grey, in astonishment, not unmixed with 
 a sense of the ridiculous. " What kind 
 of a man ? and what is his business." 
 
 He glanced good-humouredly at James, 
 but owing to the shortness of the servant's 
 sight the expression of the master's face 
 was wasted in air. 
 
 James, who had but a small stock of 
 observation and no fancy, replied respect- 
 fully : 
 
 " He seems a common man, sir ; like 
 a man you'd see in the street." 
 
 " Ah," said Mr. Grey, with a smile ; 
 " that sort of man, is it % Ah ! Which, 
 James, do you mean : the sort of man 
 you'd see walking in the streets, or 
 standing at a public-house corner 1 " 
 
 Again Mr. Grey smiled at the droll 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 11 
 
 clulness and droller simplicity of his 
 servant. 
 
 A gleam of light came into James's- 
 dim eyes upon finding the description 
 narrowed down to the selection of one 
 of two characteristics, and he said, in 
 a voice of solemn sagacity : 
 
 " The back of his coat is dirty, sir, 
 as if he'd been leaning against a public- 
 house wall." 
 
 " Or as if he had been carrying a sack 
 of corn on his back % " demanded the 
 master, laughing softly, and brushing 
 imaginary cigar -ashes off the polished 
 oak -table with his white curved little 
 finger. 
 
 For a moment James stood on his 
 heels in stupefied doubt and dismay at 
 this close questioning. He was a man of 
 action, not of thought. Had his master 
 shouted, " Eight wheel — quick march ! " 
 he would have gone out of the window, 
 
12 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 through the glass, without a murmur and 
 without a thought of reproach ; but to 
 be thus interrogated on subtleties of 
 appearance made him feel like a blindfold 
 man, who is certain he is about to be 
 attacked, but does not know where, by 
 whom, or with what weapon. He resolved 
 to risk all and escape. 
 
 " I think, sir, it was a public-house, 
 for I smelt liquor." 
 
 " That is conclusive," said the master, 
 laughing out at last. " That is all right, 
 James. I am too lazy to sjo down to 
 see him. Show him up here. Stop a 
 moment, James. Let him come up in five 
 minutes." 
 
 The servant left the room, and as he 
 did so the master laughed still more 
 loudly, and then chuckled softly to 
 himself, muttering : 
 
 " He thought the man had been leaning 
 against a public-house because he smelt 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 13 
 
 of liquor ! Ha, ha, ha ! My quaint 
 James, you will be the death of your 
 master. You will, indeed." 
 
 When he had finished his laugh he 
 dismissed the idea of James finally with 
 a roguish shrug of his shoulders and wag 
 of his head. 
 
 Then he drew down the gasalier, 
 pushed an enormous easy-chair in front 
 of the empty fire-place, pulled a small 
 table between the dining -table and the 
 easy -chair, and placed an ordinary oak 
 and green dining-room chair at the corner 
 of the dining-table near the window ; 
 then he sat down on the ordinary chair. 
 
 When this was done he ascertained 
 that the drawer of the small table opened 
 easily, closed in the drawer softly, threw 
 himself back in his own chair and began 
 smoking slowly, blowing the smoke towards 
 the ceiling without taking the cigar from 
 his lips, and keeping his legs thrust out 
 
14 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 before him, and his hands deep in his 
 trousers-pockets. 
 
 Presently the door opened ; James said, 
 " The man, sir ! " the door closed again, 
 and all was still. 
 
 " Come over and sit down, my man," 
 said the banker, in a good-natured tone 
 of voice, without, however, removing his 
 eyes from the ceiling. 
 
 To this there was no reply by either 
 sound or gesture. 
 
 Mr. Grey must have been pursuing 
 some humorous thought over the ceiling ; 
 for when he at last dropped his eyes and 
 looked towards the door, he said, with a 
 quiet sigh, as though the ridiculous in 
 the world was killing him slowly : " It's 
 too droll, too droll." Then to the man, 
 who still stood just inside the door : 
 " Come over here and sit down, my man. 
 I have been expecting a call from you. 
 Come over and sit down. Or would vou 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 15 
 
 prefer I should send the brougham for 
 you?" 
 
 As he turned his eyes round, they 
 fell on the figure of a man of forty, who, 
 with head depressed and shoulders thrust 
 up high, and a battered, worn sealskin- 
 cap held in both hands close together, 
 thumbs uppermost, was standing on "one 
 leg, a model of abject, obsequious servility. 
 
 The man made no reply ; but as Mr. 
 Grey's eyes fell upon him he substituted 
 the leg drawn up for the one on which he 
 had been standing, thrust up his shoulders, 
 and pressed down his head in token of 
 unspeakable humility under the honour 
 of Mr. Grey's glance, and of profound 
 gratitude for the honour of Mr. Grey's 
 speech. 
 
 " Come, my man ; do come over and 
 sit down. The conversation is becoming 
 monotonous already. Do come over, and 
 sit down here. I can't keep on saying 
 
1G THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 1 come ' all the evening. I assure you I 
 have expected this call from you. Do 
 come and sit down." 
 
 Mr. Grey motioned the man to the 
 large easy-chair in front of him. 
 
 At last the man moved, stealthily, 
 furtively, across the carpet, skirting the 
 furniture cautiously, as though it consisted 
 of infernal-machines which might go off 
 
 o o 
 
 at any moment. His dress was ragged 
 and torn ; his face, a long narrow one, 
 of mahogany colour ; his eyes were bright 
 full blue, the one good feature in his shy 
 unhandsome countenance. 
 
 " Sit in that chair," said Mr. Grey 
 blandly, at the same time waving his 
 hand towards the capacious and luxurious 
 easy-chair. 
 
 " Please, sir, I'd rather stand," said 
 the man, in a low sneaking tone. 
 
 The contrast between the two was 
 remarkably striking : the one, large and 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 17 
 
 liberal of aspect, gracious and humorous 
 of manner, broad-faced, generous-looking, 
 perfectly dressed, scrupulously neat ; the 
 other, drawn together, mean in form, 
 narrow of features, with avaricious mouth 
 and unsteady eye, with ragged and soiled 
 clothes. 
 
 " Sit down, my good man ; sit down.. 
 I assure you the conversation will continue 
 to be very monotonous until you take my 
 advice, and sit down in that chair. You 
 need not be afraid of spoiling it. Sit 
 down, and then you may at your leisure 
 tell me what I can do for you." 
 
 Mr. Grey may have smiled at the 
 whim of Nature in forging such a counter- 
 feit of human nature as the man before 
 him, or he may have smiled at the obvious 
 dislike with which his visitor surveyed 
 the chair. The smile, however, was a 
 pleasant, cordial, happy one. He drew in 
 his legs, sat upright, and, leaning his left 
 
 vol. I. 2 
 
18 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 elbow on the small table before him, 
 pointed to the chair with his right hand, 
 and kept his right hand fixed in the at- 
 titude of pointing until the man, with a 
 scowl at the chair and a violent upheaval 
 of his shoulders and depression of his 
 head, sank among the soft cushions. 
 
 " Now we shall get on much more 
 comfortably," said Mr. Grey, placing what 
 remained unsmoked of his cigar on the 
 ash-tray beside him, clasping his hands 
 over his waistcoat, and bending slightly 
 forward to indicate that his best atten- 
 tion was at the disposal of his visitor. 
 "What is your name?" 
 
 " Joe Farleg." 
 
 " Joe Farleg, Joe Farleg," mused, half 
 aloud, Mr. Grey. "An odd name. Why 
 am I fated always to meet people with 
 odd ways or odd names ? Well, never 
 mind answering that question, Joe," he 
 said, more loudly, in an indulgent tone, 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 1<) 
 
 as though he felt he would be violating 
 kindliness by insisting on a reply which 
 had little or nothing to do with Farleg. 
 He continued, " I don't think I have ever 
 seen you or heard your name before ; 
 and although I did not think it improbable 
 you, or someone like you, would call, I 
 could not know exactly whom I was to 
 see. Before we go any farther, I ask 
 you : Haven't I been good to you without 
 even knowing who you were ? " 
 
 "Good to me, sir!" cried the man, 
 in surprise. 
 
 " Yes ; I have been very good to you 
 in not setting the police after you." 
 
 The man tried to struggle up out of 
 the chair, but, unused to a seat of the 
 kind, struggled for a moment in vain. 
 At last he gained his feet, and with an 
 oath demanded : " How did you know I 
 did it ? Are you going to set them after 
 me now ? " His blue eyes swiftly explored 
 
20 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 the room to find if the officers had sprung 
 out of concealment, and to ascertain the 
 chances of his escape. 
 
 With a kindly wave of his hand, 
 Mr. Grey indicated the chair. " I have 
 not even spoken to the police about the 
 matter, and I do not intend speaking to 
 them. Sit down in your chair, Joe, and 
 let us talk the matter over quietly." 
 
 " I'm d — d if I sit in that chair 
 asfain. It smothers me." 
 
 o 
 
 He regarded the banker with un- 
 easiness and the chair with terror. 
 
 Mr. Grey laughed outright. The laugh- 
 ter seemed to soothe Farleg a little. He 
 cast his large blue eyes once more hastily 
 round the room, then regarded the banker 
 for an instant, and dropj)ed his glance 
 upon the chair. 
 
 Nothing could have been more re- 
 assuring than the brilliantly-lighted dining- 
 room, the good-natured, good-humoured 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 21 
 
 face of its master, and the harmlessly 
 seductive appearance of the chair. Farleg 
 was ashamed of his fears ; upon another 
 invitation, and an assurance that nothing 
 farther would be said by his host until 
 he had returned to his former position, 
 he threw himself once more into the 
 comfortable seat. 
 
 "And now, Joe, that we are in a 
 position to go on smoothly, what can I 
 do for you ?" 
 
 "You remember, sir, the night of the 
 robbery, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes ; you broke into my house, into 
 one of the tower-rooms, on the evening 
 of the 17th of this month, and you carried 
 off a few things of no great value." 
 
 " And you're not going to send the 
 police after me ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Farleg leaned forward in his chair 
 until his elbows rested on his knees. 
 
22 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 " You missed the things. You said 
 a while ago you expected me, or whoever 
 did the robbery ; was that a true word? 
 Did you expect whoever did the robbery 
 to come and see you ? " 
 
 " I did. I could not be sure you would 
 come, but when I missed the things I 
 thought you might call. There was, of 
 course, the chance you might not." 
 
 " That's it. "Well, I have come, you 
 see. I found some rings, and I kept 
 three ; but I thought you might like to 
 have this one, and I brought it to you, 
 as I am about to leave the country. 
 Look at it. It's a plain gold guard." 
 
 As Farleg said these words his eyes, 
 no longer wandering, fixed themselves on 
 the face of Mr. Grey. 
 
 For an instant the face of the banker 
 puckered and wrinkled up like a blighted 
 leaf. Almost instantly it smoothed out 
 again ; and, with a bland smile, he said : 
 
A CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR. 23 
 
 "Thank you very much. It was my 
 poor wife's guard ring. You were very 
 kind to think of bringing* it back to me." 
 
 As he spoke he began softly opening 
 the drawer of the little table that stood 
 between him and the burglar. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A GENEROUS BANKER. 
 
 The ring lay on the little table. Mr. Grey 
 did not take it up, but left it where Farleg 
 had placed it. 
 
 When the banker had pulled out the 
 drawer half-a-dozen inches, he looked up 
 from the ring, and, with a glance of kindly 
 interest, said : 
 
 " So you intend leaving the country. 
 Why? And where do you purpose going?" 
 
 Farleg looked down at his boots, and 
 thrust up his shoulders as he answered : 
 
 " Well, sir, things are getting hot, and 
 the place is getting hot. It isn't every 
 one has so much consideration as you 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 25 
 
 for a man who has to live as best he 
 can 
 
 "Poor fellow!" 
 
 "And if I and the old woman don't 
 clear out of this soon, why, they'll be 
 sending me away, ' Carriage paid : with 
 care.' " 
 
 He paused, raised his head, and turned 
 those prominent blue eyes on the face of 
 the banker. The latter was drawing small 
 circles on the table in front of him with 
 the white forefinger of his left hand, his 
 eyes intently followed his finger, his 
 white right hand rested on the edge of 
 the partly open drawer. 
 
 Mr. Grey said, softly and emphatically : 
 "I understand, I understand. Go on, and 
 don't be afraid to speak plainly, Joe. May 
 I ask you what you were before you de- 
 voted yourself to your present — profession? 
 Your conversation and way of putting 
 things are far above the average of men 
 
26 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 of your calling ; " with a smile of sly 
 interest. 
 
 " I was a clerk, sir," answered the 
 man meekly. 
 
 "In a bank ? " demanded the banker,, 
 looking up brightly. 
 
 "No, sir; in a corn-store." 
 
 " Ah, I thought it couldn't have been 
 in a bank. We are not so fortunate a& 
 to have men of your talents and enterprise 
 in banks. But I interrupted you. Pray, 
 
 proceed. You were about to say " The 
 
 invitation was accompanied by a gracious- 
 and encouraging wave of the left hand. 
 
 " I was thinking, sir, that it would 
 be best if I went away of my own accord; 
 and I thought I'd just mention this matter 
 to you when I called with the guard ring 
 of your good lady that's dead and gone." 
 
 ""Quite right, quite right. And natu- 
 rally you thought that I might be willing 
 to lend you a hand on your way, partly 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 27 
 
 out of feeling for you in your difficult 
 position, and partly out of gratitude to 
 you for your kind though tfulness in bring- 
 ing me back the guard ring of poor 
 Mrs. Grey." 
 
 The white forefinger of the white left 
 hand went on quietly describing the circles, 
 but the circles were one after the other 
 increasing in circumference. The white 
 right hand still rested on the edge of 
 the partly-open drawer. 
 
 " That's it," said Farleg, with a sigh of 
 relief. It was such a comfort to deal 
 with a sensible man, a man who did 
 most of the talking and thinking for you. 
 " You know, sir, I found the rings " 
 
 " Quite so, quite so." 
 
 Mr. Grey gave up describing circles, and 
 for a while devoted himself to parallelo- 
 grams. When he had finished each figure 
 he regarded the invisible design for a while 
 as though comparing the result of his labour 
 
28 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 with an ideal parallelogram. Then, becoming 
 dissatisfied with his work, he began afresh. 
 
 " Quite so," he repeated, after a silence 
 of a few moments. " You need not trouble 
 yourself to go into detail. In fact, I 
 prefer you should not, as my feelings 
 are still much occupied with my great 
 loss. Will you answer a few questions 
 that may help to allay and soothe my 
 feelings ? " 
 
 He ceased drawing the parallelograms, 
 and looked up at the other with a glance 
 of friendly enquiry. 
 
 Farleg threw himself back in his chair, 
 and replied gravely : " I'll answer you, 
 sir, any question it may please you to 
 put." 
 
 "At what hour on the evening of the 
 17th did you break into this house ? " 
 
 " Eight o'clock." 
 
 " By Jove, Joe, you were an adven- 
 turous fellow to break into a house in 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 29 
 
 dayliglit ! I do think, in the face of such 
 an enterprising spirit, you ought to seek 
 a new country, where you would be properly 
 appreciated. You have no chance here. Go 
 to some place where the telegraph has not 
 yet struck root. And yet for a man of 
 your peculiar calling a dense population 
 and civilisation are requisite. Your case, 
 Joe, interests me a good deal, and, rely 
 upon it, I shall always be glad to hear 
 of your welfare and prosperity. I feel 
 for you in your little difficulty, and I ap- 
 plaud your boldness. Fancy, breaking into 
 a man's house at eight o'clock of an August 
 evening ! And how did you get in, Joe ? 
 I suppose by a ladder the workman had 
 left against the wall 1 " 
 
 " Yes, sir. It was seeing a ladder 
 against the wall that put the idea into 
 my head." 
 
 The banker looked at Farleg with an 
 expression of unlimited admiration. 
 
30 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 ""What a general you would make, 
 Joe !" cried Mr. Grey, in pleasant enthu- 
 siasm. " You would use every bulrush 
 as cover for your men ! And so, when 
 you saw the ladder against the wall, you 
 thought to yourself you might as well 
 slip up that ladder and have a look 
 round ? What a pushing man of business 
 too ! And you were alone ? ' ! 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "You entered the tower first-floor, 
 and gathered up a few things, this ring 
 of my poor wife among the rest. But 
 I don't think you went into any other 
 
 if 
 
 room £ 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " And I don't think vou could have 
 been very long in the room ; now, about 
 how long ? " 
 
 " Short of an hour. I heard you 
 coming back, and I cleared out then." 
 
 " Ah ! You heard me coming back, 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 31 
 
 and you cleared out then. Quite so. No 
 doubt it was inconsiderate of me to 
 come back and disturb you. But, you 
 know, I was in a great state of anxiety 
 and alarm — anxiety and alarm which 
 were unfortunately only too well founded, 
 as you, no doubt, have heard ; we need 
 not dwell on that painful event now. 
 May I ask you if you have spoken of 
 this affair to anyone ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Not to a soul?" 
 
 "Not to a soul." 
 
 "What a discreet general you would 
 make ! Upon my word I think you 
 ought to go to California. San Francisco 
 is the place for one so daring and so 
 cautious. What a dashing cavalry leader 
 you would make ! And yet it would be 
 a pity to throw you away on cavalry. 
 Your natural place would be in the 
 engineers." 
 
32 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Mr. Grey half closed his eyes, and 
 gazed dreamily for a few seconds at the 
 reclining figure of the man before him. 
 Then hitching his chair a few inches 
 nearer to the small table standing between 
 him and Farleg, he said, in a drawling 
 tone, as he softly slipped his hand into 
 the drawer : 
 
 " I admire you for your ingenuity in 
 availing yourself of that ladder, and for 
 your boldness in entering the house in 
 daylight. But I am completely carried 
 away with enthusiasm when I think of 
 your coming here to me, telling me this 
 tale, and preserving the admirable calm- 
 ness which you display. Indeed, Joe, I 
 am amazed." 
 
 " Thank you, sir." 
 
 "Now, how much money did you 
 think I'd be likely to give to help you 
 out of this scrape, and out of this 
 country % " 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 33 
 
 "Mr. Grey, you're a rich man." 
 
 The banker bowed and smiled. 
 
 "And that ring ought to be worth a 
 heap of money to you." 
 
 "A guinea, or perhaps thirty shillings. 
 At the very most I should say two 
 pounds." 
 
 " But, sir, considering that it was your 
 wife's, and that she wore it on the very 
 day—" 
 
 " Quite so. On the very day of her 
 wedding -" 
 
 " That is not what I meant " 
 
 " But that is the aspect of the affair 
 which endears the ring to me. Pray let 
 us keep to the business in hand. You 
 bring me a ring which I own I should 
 not like you to have kept from me. You 
 make me a present of this ring, and you 
 ask me to help you out of the country. 
 Now, how much would be sufficient to 
 help you out of the country, and settle 
 
 VOL. I. 3 
 
34 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 you and your wife comfortably in a new 
 home ? " 
 
 " A thousand pounds." 
 
 " A thousand pounds ! My dear Joe, 
 if you were about to represent the majesty 
 of the kingdoms of Great Britain and 
 Ireland at a foreign court, you could 
 ask little more for travelling- expenses 
 and commencing existence. A thousand 
 pounds ! What a lucrative business yours 
 must have been to make you hope you 
 could get a thousand pounds for the 
 goodwill of it ! " 
 
 " But it is not every day a thing like 
 this turns up. You have a lot of waiting 
 before you get your chance. In fact, my 
 chance did not belong to the ordinary 
 business at all." 
 
 " Quite so. It was a kind of per- 
 quisite. Well, now, Joe, don't you think 
 if I gave you twenty-five pounds as a 
 present it would fully provide for your 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 35 
 
 outward voyage ? ' ; Mr. Grey made the 
 proposal with a winning and an enticing 
 gesture of his left hand. 
 
 Farleg looked down at his boots again, 
 and said very slowly, and with an accent 
 that left no doubt of his earnestness and 
 determination : 
 
 " It isn't often a chance of this kind 
 turns up, and I can't afford to let it 
 pass ; no honest man could afford to let 
 it pass, and I have a wife looking to me. 
 You have no one looking to you, not 
 even a wife — not even a wife." 
 
 " Quite so." 
 
 "Well, I want the money. I want 
 to try and get an honest start in life, 
 and I think I shall buy land " 
 
 " Out of the thousand pounds ? " 
 queried Mr. Grey, with a look of amused 
 enjoyment. 
 
 " Out of the thousand pounds you are 
 going to give me. Can't you see," added 
 
36 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Farleg, sitting up in his chair, leaning 
 both his elbows on the small table between 
 them, " can't yon see it's to your advan- 
 tage as well as mine to give me a large 
 
 " 
 
 sum 5 
 
 " Candidly I cannot/' answered Mr. 
 Grey, tapping Farleg encouragingly on 
 the shoulder with his white left hand. 
 " Tell me how it is. I am quite willing 
 to be convinced." 
 
 " "Well, if I take your five-and-twenty, 
 I spend it here, or I spend it getting 
 there, and then I'm stranded, don't you 
 see, sir \ 
 
 " Go on." With two soft appreciative 
 pats from the left white hand. 
 
 " Of course, as soon as I find myself 
 hard up I come to you, or I write to you 
 for more, and that would only be wasting 
 your time." 
 
 " But," said Mr. Grey, with a sly look 
 and a sly wag of his head, " if you got 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 
 
 the thousand you might spend it here 
 or there, and then you might again be 
 applying to me. Ah, no ! Joe, I don't 
 think it would do to give you that thou- 
 sand. You can have the twenty-five now, 
 if you like." 
 
 " Well, sir, I've looked into the matter 
 deeper than that. When you give me 
 the thousand, I and my wife will leave 
 this country, go to America, out West, 
 and buy land. There we shall settle 
 down as respectable people, and it would 
 be no advantage to me to rake up the 
 past, once I was settled down and pros- 
 perous. So, sir, if you please, I'll have 
 the thousand." 
 
 There was respectful resolution in 
 Farleg's voice as he spoke. The faces of 
 the two men were not more than a foot 
 apart now. They were looking as straight 
 into one another's eyes as two experienced 
 fencers when the play begins. Mr. Grey's 
 
38 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 face ceased to move, and took a settled 
 expression of gracious badinage. 
 
 " I think, Joe," said he, " that I can 
 manage the matter more economically than 
 your way. 
 
 " What is that way, sir ? " 
 
 " As I told you before, I look on you 
 as a very enterprising man. First, you 
 break into a man's house in daylight, and 
 then you come and beard the lion in his 
 den. You come to the man whose house 
 you honoured by a visit through a window, 
 and you say to him — I admit that nothing 
 could have been in better taste than your 
 manner of saying it " 
 
 " Thank you, sir, but you took me so- 
 kindly and so gentleman-like." 
 
 " Thank you, Joe ; but I mustn't com- 
 pliment you again, or we shall get no 
 farther than compliments to-night. As I 
 was saying, you ask him for no less than 
 a thousand pounds to help you out of 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 39 
 
 the country and into a respectable line of 
 life. Indeed, all my sympathy is with 
 you in your good intention, but then I 
 have to think of myself " 
 
 " But you're a rich man, sir, and to 
 you a thousand pounds isn't much, and 
 it's everything to me. It will make me 
 safe, and help me out of a way of life I 
 never took to until driven to it," pleaded 
 Farleg. « 
 
 " Well put, very well put. Now, this 
 is my position. This is my plan ; let 
 me hear what you think of it : On the 
 night or evening of the 17th you break 
 into my house ; on the night or evening 
 of the 27th you visit me for some purpose 
 or other " 
 
 " To give you back your dead wife's 
 ring." 
 
 " Quite so. You may be sure I am 
 overlooking no point in the case. Let me 
 proceed with my view. You and I don't 
 
40 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 get on well together, and you attack me. 
 You are clearly the burglar, and I am 
 attacked by you, and I defend myself with 
 force. You kill me ; that is no good to 
 you. You won't make a penny by my 
 death. But suppose it should unhappily 
 occur that the revolver, on the trigger of 
 which, Joe, I now have my finger, and 
 the muzzle of which is about a foot from 
 your heart, suppose it should go off, what 
 then ? You can see the accident would 
 be all in my favour." 
 
 Farleg uttered a loud whistle. 
 
 For a second no word was spoken. No 
 movement was made in that room. 
 
 All at once, apparently from the feet 
 of the two men, a wild alarmed scream of 
 a woman shot up through the silence, and 
 shook the silence into echoes of chattering 
 fear. 
 
 As though a blast had struck the 
 banker s face, it shrivelled up like a 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 41 
 
 withered leaf. Something heavy fell from 
 his hand in the drawer, and he rose slowly, 
 painfully, to his feet. 
 
 Farleg rose also, keeping his face in 
 the same relation, and on the same level 
 as the banker's, until the pinched face of 
 the banker stole slowly above the burglar's. 
 
 The hands of Grey rested on the table. 
 His eyes were fixed on vacancy. He 
 seemed to be listening intently, spellbound 
 by some awful vision, some distracting 
 anticipation intimately concerned with 
 appalling voices. 
 
 Slowly from his lips trickled the 
 whispered words : " What was that ? " 
 
 " My wife's voice," whispered Farleg. 
 *' You thought it was yours. When I told 
 you no one knew, I meant I had no pal. 
 But my wife knows all, and if anything 
 -came amiss to me she'd tell all." 
 
 " I understand," the banker answered, 
 still in a whisper. The dread was slowly 
 
42 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 descending from his face, and he made a 
 hideous attempt at a smile. 
 
 " I, too," pursued Farleg, " was afraid 
 we might quarrel, and left her there. For 
 one whistle she was to scream out to show 
 she was on the watch. For two whistles 
 she was to run away and call help. Do 
 you see, sir ? " 
 
 " Very clever. Very neat. You have 
 won the odd trick." 
 
 " And honours are divided." 
 
 " Yes. How is that money to reach 
 you k 
 
 " I'd like it in gold, sir, if you please. 
 You can send it in a large parcel, a 
 hamper, sir, or a large box, so that no 
 one need be the wiser. I'm for your 
 own good as well as my own in this 
 matter." 
 
 " You shall have the money the day 
 after to-morrow at four o'clock. It will 
 reach you from London. Now go." 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 4a 
 
 " Well, after what has been done, and 
 our coming to a bargain, shake hands, 
 Wat," said the man, in a tone of insolent 
 triumph. 
 
 " Go, sir. Go at once!" 
 
 " Honours are not divided ; I hold 
 three to your one. Give me your hand,, 
 old man. Joe Farleg will never split on 
 a pal." 
 
 With a shudder of loathing the banker 
 held out his hand. 
 
 As soon as he was alone, the moment 
 the door was shut, he took up the claret- 
 jug, poured the contents over his right 
 hand to cleanse it from the contamination 
 of that touch, and then walked hastily 
 up and down the room, waving his hand 
 through the air until it dried. 
 
 " A thousand isn't much to secure him. 
 But will it secure him ? That is the 
 question. Yes, I think it will. I think 
 the coast is now clear. With prudence 
 
44 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 and patience I can do all now/' he 
 whispered to himself, with his left hand 
 on his forehead. "Wat Grey, you've 
 had a close shave. Nothing could have 
 been closer. Had you pulled that trigger 
 all would have been lost. Now you have 
 a clear stage, and must let things take 
 their course. The old man can't live for 
 ever ; and until he dies you must keep 
 quiet and repress all indication of the 
 direction in which your hopes lie. Maud 
 does not dream of this." 
 
 A knock at the door. 
 
 "Come in." 
 
 James, the servant, entered, holding 
 a slip of paper in his hand. 
 
 " What is it, James ? " asked the 
 master. 
 
 " That man that's gone out, sir, said 
 he forgot to give his address, and as you 
 might want it he asked me to take it up 
 to you." 
 
A GENEROUS BANKER. 45 
 
 Mr. Grey was standing by the low 
 gasalier as the servant handed him the 
 piece of paper. 
 
 Mr. Grey took the address in his right 
 hand; as he did so the purblind footman 
 sprang back a pace. 
 
 " What's the matter \ " demanded Mr. 
 Grey with an amused smile. 
 
 " Ex — excuse — me ■ — sir/' the man 
 faltered, "but your hand " 
 
 "Well, what about it?" 
 
 " It's all over blood ! " 
 
 " What ! What do you say ? " shouted 
 the master, in a tone of dismay. "Do 
 you want a thousand too 1 " 
 
 " Indeed, no, sir ; and I beg pardon ; 
 but do look at your hand." 
 
 Mr. Grey held up his hand, examined 
 it, and then burst out into a loud shout 
 of laughter. When he could speak he 
 cried : 
 
 " You charming idiot ! You will kill 
 
46 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 me with your droll ways. That dirty 
 wretch who went out touched my hand. 
 I had no water near me, so I poured 
 •some claret over my hand and forgot to 
 wipe it." 
 
 He approached James and held out 
 his hand, saying, " Look." Then added, 
 in a tone of solemn amusement : " James, 
 there was once a man who died of laughing 
 at seeing an ass eat. I do think I shall 
 die of laughing at hearing a donkey talk. 
 Bring me the coffee. Go." 
 
 And as the servant was leaving the 
 room, Mr. Grey broke out into a laugh 
 of quiet self-congratulation on the fact of 
 his possessing such a wonderful source of 
 amusement in his servant, James. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MANOR HOUSE. 
 
 The house occupied by Mr. Grey was 
 very old. It had been the Manor House, 
 and was still called the Manor House, or 
 the Manor, although it had long ago 
 ceased to be the property of the original 
 owner's descendants. For years before 
 Mr. Grey bought it the house had been 
 uninhabited. 
 
 It bore a bad name — why, no one 
 could tell. The fortunes of the lords 
 of the manor had gradually mouldered 
 away, and the old house had been allowed 
 to fall into decay and dilapidation. 
 
 During the time it was shut up 
 
48 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 people spoke of it as a kind of phantom 
 house ; some regarded, it as a myth, and 
 others treated it with a superstitious 
 respect as a thing which might exercise 
 an evil influence over those who fell under 
 the shadow of its displeasure. 
 
 Sunken deeply from the road, sur- 
 rounded by a wild tangle of rugged oaks, 
 its grounds girt with walls ten feet high, 
 there were few points open to the public 
 from which a glimpse of it could be 
 caught, and no spot from which a full 
 view could be obtained. 
 
 Boys had scaled the walls and pene- 
 trated into the tangled mazes of the 
 neglected undergrowth. But the briars 
 and brambles and bushes were too rough 
 even for boys, and they came away 
 soon. 
 
 No boy of Daneford — and there were 
 high - hearted, brave, adventurous boys 
 there — could say he had penetrated 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 49 
 
 as far as the house. Although those who 
 had once been boys of Daneford had 
 faced the enemies of their country in 
 every clime, by day and by night, on 
 land and sea, and although the boys of 
 that city, at the time spoken of, were 
 made of as stout stuff and inspired by 
 as gallant hearts as the boys who had 
 fought and fallen in Spain, India, America, 
 Belgium, Egypt, where you will, not one 
 of all of them would dare, alone and by 
 night, to break through that jungle, and 
 penetrate to that house. 
 
 The soil of the Manor Park was 
 low and full of rich juices, and fertile 
 with long rest, so the vegetation beneath 
 the gnarled boughs of the interlacing oaks 
 could hold the moisture well when the 
 sun was hot, and from that ground to 
 the sun they never saw clearly rose huge 
 green and red and yellow slimy weeds 
 among the brambles and the shrubs. 
 
 vol. i. 4 
 
50 THE WEIRD SISTEI 
 
 From the nests of nianv generations 
 
 of birds which had built in those distorted 
 tret- seeds of all things that grow on 
 this land had fallen, and taken root 
 and prospered in the rich ground of 
 the sultry glens and caverns formed by 
 the scraggy arms and foliage of the oaks : 
 vear after year this disorderly srrowth 
 had burst up out of the fat. greasy soil 
 in unwholesome profusion, unclean luxury, 
 and had rotted down a grain into the oyer- 
 lush earth. So that the spring-root and 
 ground-fruit, and all manner of ereen 
 things, jostled and crushed one another, 
 and the weaker were strangled and eaten 
 up by the stronger. 
 
 Thousands of birds yearly built in the 
 trees of the Manor Park : for here came 
 no guns to kill or scare, no boys to pilfer 
 the eggs or young ones; and this republic 
 of birds over-head was a source of great 
 profit to the soil below. 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 51 
 
 Often birds fell from the trees dead 
 of cold in the winter nights, and when 
 the sun shone out the industrious mole 
 came and buried them decently, and their 
 bones were of service to the soil. 
 
 The mole, too, was useful in another 
 way, for he turned up the clay now and 
 then, here and there, and opened avenues 
 into the earth for water burdened with 
 fructifying juices. 
 
 And here, too, was that ever-active 
 sexton of the vegetable world, the fungus. 
 In the vast winds of the winters, when 
 the oaks gored one another, and tore off 
 the fangs of their antlers, great boughs 
 fell with shrieks to the earth. Later the 
 sexton fungus crept over to the shattered 
 limbs and lodged on them, and ate them 
 up silently and slowly, and then the 
 fungus itself melted into the earth. 
 
 Here were worms of enormous growth, 
 and frogs and toads, and snails and 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
52 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 lizards, and all other kinds of slimy 
 insects and reptiles, and the boys said 
 snakes, but snakes were put forward in 
 excuse of fear on the part of the boys. 
 There were no hares, no rabbits, no deer, 
 no cows, no sheep, no goats, nor any of 
 the gentle creatures that put grass and 
 green things to uses profitable to man. 
 
 Here in those vaults of sickly twilight 
 vegetable nature held high saturnalia, un- 
 disturbed save by the seasons and worms 
 and snails and caterpillars and slugs. This 
 was not a prosperous field, a prudent grove, 
 a stately wood, a discreet garden ; it was 
 a robber's cave of the green world, in 
 which the plunder of all the fields lay 
 heaped without design, for no good or 
 useful end. 
 
 At night the darkness was thick and 
 hot in these blind alleys and inexplorable 
 aisles. When the foot was put down some- 
 thing slipped beneath it, a greasy branch, 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 53 
 
 a viscous fruit, a reptile, or the fat stalk 
 of some large-leafed ground-plant. 
 
 The trunks of the trees and the branches 
 of the shrubs were damp with gelatinous 
 dews. If there was a moon, something 
 might always be seen sliding silently 
 through the grass or leaves and pulpy roots. 
 
 Strange and depressing odours of decay 
 came stealthily upon the sense now and 
 then, and filled the mind with hints of 
 unutterable fears. If in the branches above 
 a sleeping bird chirped or fluttered, it 
 seemed as though the last bird left was 
 stealing away from the fearful place. The 
 fat reptiles that glided and slipped in 
 the ghostly moonlight were fleeing, and 
 leaving you alone to behold some spectacle, 
 encounter some fate, too repulsive for the 
 contemplation of reason. 
 
 Within this belt of rank vegetation 
 and oaks the Manor House stood. The 
 house had a plain stone front with 
 
54 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 small narrow windows, three on each side 
 of the main door. At the rear was a 
 large paved court-yard, with a pump 
 and horse-trough in the middle. 
 
 The chief building consisted of a ground- 
 floor, on which were the reception-rooms ; 
 a first floor of bedrooms ; and a second 
 floor, the windows of which were clormar, 
 intended for the servants of the establish- 
 ment. 
 
 The walls of the house were of great 
 thickness and strength. On the ground 
 and first floors most of the doorways into 
 the passages had double doors. Owing to 
 the great thickness of the walls, and the 
 double doors, and the massive floorings 
 and partition walls, sounds, even the 
 loudest, travelled with great difficulty 
 through that house. 
 
 In front of the house stretched a broad 
 gravelled drive, which narrowed into a 
 gravelled road as it set off to the main 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 55 
 
 road, a considerable distance farther on. 
 This carriage - road wound in and out 
 through the oaks of the Park. Between 
 the gravelled open in front of the house 
 and the trees stretched a narrow band 
 of shaven grass. This narrow band of 
 grass followed the carriage-road up to the 
 lodge-gate. 
 
 Around the paved yard in the rear 
 stood the coach-house, stables, kitchen, 
 laundry, scullery, larder, and other offices, 
 and still farther to the rear of the house, 
 behind the yard, were the flower and 
 kitchen gardens. To the rear of all,, 
 surrounding all, and binding all in like 
 suffocating bondage, was the Park of 
 gnarled oaks and rank lush undergrowth 
 and slimy soil. 
 
 In looking at the house you were 
 not conscious of anything uncanny or 
 repulsive. At the left-hand end — that is, 
 the end of the house nearest to Daneford 
 
■56 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 — there rose a tower, mounting only one 
 storey above the dormar floor. 
 
 Upon the top of this tower was a 
 huge iron tank, corroded into a skeleton 
 of its former self. Looking at that weather- 
 battered and rusted tank, with the under- 
 growth in the Park behind you, the former 
 resembled the decay of the indomitable 
 natives of America, who perished slowly 
 in opposing themselves to fate ; the over- 
 ripe prosperity of the latter looked like 
 the destruction of the Romans, who ate 
 and drank and slept their simplicity and 
 their manhood away. 
 
 One peculiarity of this house was that 
 no green plant or creeper could get a 
 living out of its dry walls. Neither on the 
 house nor on the tower had ever been 
 seen one leaf native to the place. Here 
 was another tiling in strong contrast to 
 the teeming vegetation environing this 
 house. 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 57 
 
 It was not while looking at the Manor 
 3^011 felt its unpleasant influence. In 
 sunshine nothing disturbed your peace 
 while you contemplated its dry, cold front. 
 But when you had gone away ; when you 
 were sitting in your own bright room ; 
 when you were walking along a lonely 
 road ; when you awoke in the middle 
 of the night, and heard the torrents 
 of the storm roar as they whirled round 
 your window ; then, if the thought of that 
 house came up before your mind, you 
 shrank back from its image as from an 
 apparition of evil mission. In your mental 
 vision the house itself seemed scared and 
 afeared. 
 
 The intense green life that dwelt 
 beneath those oaks stood out in startling 
 contrast with the absolute nudity of those 
 unapparelled stones. The house seemed to 
 shrink instinctively from any contact with 
 verdure, as though it felt assured of evil 
 
58 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 from moss or leaf or blade. It appeared 
 to dread that the oaks would creep up 
 on it and overwhelm it in their porten- 
 tous shadows, beat it down with their 
 giant arms. 
 
 That tower stood out in the imagina- 
 tion like an arm uplifted in appeal ; that 
 shattered tank became a tattered flag of 
 distress. The windows looked like scared 
 eyes, the broad doorway a mouth gaj3ing 
 with terror. The whole building quivered 
 with human horror, was silent with frozen 
 awe. 
 
 In the year 1856 Henry Walter Grey's 
 father died, and the son became sole pro- 
 prietor of the Daneford Bank. Up to 
 that time the son had lived, with his 
 wife, to whom he had then been married 
 six years, in the Bank-house as manager 
 under his father. There were only a few 
 years' lease of his father's suburban resi- 
 dence to run, and a likelihood arose that 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 59 
 
 the landlord would not renew, so young 
 Grey had to look out for a home, as he 
 intended appointing a manager and living 
 away from the office. 
 
 At that time the Manor House was 
 in the market, and Mr. Grey bought it 
 for, as he said, " a song, and a very poor 
 song, too," considering the extent of the 
 Park, the value of the timber, and the 
 spacious old house. As a matter of fact, 
 no one valued the dwelling at a penny 
 beyond what the sale of its stones would 
 bring ; for the impression of the seller 
 was that, owing to its uncanny aspect and 
 bad name, no one would think of buying 
 it to live in. 
 
 All Daneford was taken by surprise 
 when it heard that young Grey, Wat 
 Grey, Wat had bought the fearful Manor 
 House in which no family had lived for 
 generations, and from which even the 
 furniture and servants had been long 
 
60 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 since withdrawn. Did he mean to take 
 it down, build a new house, and effect 
 a wholesome clearance of those odious 
 groves ? 
 
 No, he had answered, with a light 
 laugh, he harboured no intention of knock- 
 ing down the old house to please the 
 neighbours ; of course he was going to 
 repair the house, and when it was fully 
 restored he would ask his friends to come 
 and try if beef and mutton tasted worse, 
 or wine was less cheering, under that 
 roof because nervous people had been 
 pleased to frighten themselves into fits 
 over the Park and the Manor House. 
 
 In a year the house had been put 
 into thorough order, and even the tower 
 had not been wholly neglected, for 
 one room of it, that on a level with 
 Mr. Grey's own bedroom, had been 
 completely renovated into a kind of 
 extra dressing-room to Mr. Grey's bed- 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 61 
 
 room, from which a short passage led 
 to it. 
 
 Nothing was done to the ground- 
 floor of the tower; nothing was done to 
 the floor on a level with the dormar ; 
 nothing was done with the floor above 
 the dormar. 
 
 Nothing was done to the unsightly 
 tank on the top of the tower. 
 
 With respect to the rooms of the 
 tower, Mr. Grey said he had no need of 
 more than the one. 
 
 With respect to the tank, he said he 
 would in no way try to diminish the 
 unprepossessing aspect of the exterior of 
 the house ; he would rely upon the 
 interior, the good cheer and the welcome 
 beneath the roof, to -countervail the ill- 
 omened outer walls. 
 
 There was another reason, too, Mr. 
 Grey said, why he had made up his mind 
 to alter nothing in the surrounding grounds 
 
62 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 or outward aspect of the house — he wanted 
 to see whether that house was going to 
 beat him, or he was going to beat 
 that house. 
 
 So when all was in order, he set about 
 house-warming on a prodigious scale — a 
 scale that was a revelation to the people 
 of Daneford. 
 
 He filled all the bedrooms with guests, 
 and had a couple of dozen men to dine 
 with him every day for a fortnight. 
 
 He told his servants, as long as they 
 did their work punctually and satisfactorily, 
 they might have friends to see them, and 
 might make their friends welcome to the 
 best things in the servants' hall every day 
 for a fortnight. 
 
 There were bonfires in the courtyard, 
 and fiddlers and dancing. A barrel of 
 beer was placed on the horse-trough, and 
 mugs and cans appeared in glittering rows 
 on a table beside the cask, and painted 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 63 
 
 on the butt-end of the cask the words, 
 "Help yourself." 
 
 When he lived in town his establish- 
 ment had consisted of three servants. For 
 the fete a dozen additional servants were 
 engaged and a French cook. There were 
 a lodge and gate to the Manor Park, but 
 there was no lodge-man or woman ; and 
 during the festivities the gate always 
 stood open until midnight, and all passers- 
 by were free to come in and join the 
 dancers and partake of the ale. 
 
 One day he had all the clerks of his 
 own bank to dine with him ; and while 
 they were over their wine and cigars he 
 informed them their salaries were from 
 that hour advanced twenty per cent. 
 
 He was then a simple member of the 
 Chamber of Commerce ; he had not yet 
 been elected chairman. He entertained 
 the whole Chamber another evening, and 
 then told the members he had that day 
 
64 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 written to their secretary, declaring his 
 resolution not to charge interest on the 
 money advanced by his bank — three 
 thousand pounds — for the completion of 
 the new building in course of construction 
 by the Chamber. 
 
 A third evening he asked all the 
 members of the Harbour Board, and told 
 them that he had made up his mind to 
 abandon the old claim for interest on 
 their overdraughts set up by his father. 
 
 Then he gave a Commercial Club 
 evening, to which were bidden all his 
 friends and acquaintances, who were also 
 members of the club. After roast beef 
 came two large silver dishes, on one of 
 which was, plainly enough, plum-pudding ; 
 on the other, something that was plainly 
 not plum-pudding. The host nodded to 
 the servants, and both dishes burst into 
 flame ; the dish that contained the pluin- 
 pudding standing opposite the treasurer 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. 65 
 
 of the club, at the foot of the table ; 
 the thing that was not plum - pudding 
 standing opposite the banker. What- 
 ever had been before him was, when the 
 brandy ceased to burn, all consumed, 
 except a little black matter that floated 
 about on the surface of the fluid in the 
 dish. 
 
 " Everyone must have some of my 
 new sauce. I invented it myself, and I 
 will take it as a favour if all will taste 
 it with the pudding." 
 
 All partook of it and praised it highly, 
 and many said they had never tasted its 
 like before, and several began elaborate 
 analyses of it, and minute comparisons 
 between it and a hundred of well-known 
 sauces. 
 
 After a while he said : " The roast 
 beef and plum-pudding of Old England 
 for ever ! " Then pointing to the dish 
 containing the floating black matter before 
 
 vol. i. 5 
 
G6 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 him, "And the ashes of my mortgage on 
 the club property once ! " 
 
 The Boat Club were his guests another 
 evening, and a large gold loving-cup was 
 brought in and carried about with a rich 
 compound of dark wines and stimulating 
 spices, and out of this all were to drink. 
 When all had tasted and toasted in the 
 common cup the object of their common 
 solicitude, the last man after drinking 
 called out that there was something 
 which rattled and jingled and slid about 
 in the bottom of the cup. The master of 
 the house seemed more inquisitive than 
 any of the others, bade the finder spill 
 out the contents of the cup on a salver, 
 and, behold, one hundred and five new 
 sovereigns fresh from the Mint ! Upon 
 this discovery the host rose and said that 
 love was the rarest of alchemy, and that 
 the touch of a score of loyal lips, all 
 having; the one interest at heart, had 
 
THE MANOR HOUSE. G7 
 
 changed the liquor into gold for the good 
 of the club, and that the gold and the 
 cup must go together to the club. 
 
 When he had the organisers and 
 directors of the Poor's Christmas Coal 
 Fund to dinner, each member found, 
 folded up in his napkin, twenty orders, 
 each order for five shillings' worth of 
 coal. 
 
 Such generous and kindly deeds, and 
 such cordial hospitality, could not but 
 endear him to the people of Daneford ; 
 and by reason of his knowing so many 
 men intimately, and each one of these 
 men being more or less proud of the 
 acquaintance, they all called him "Wat," 
 to show how very intimate they were 
 with him, and to show that in the best 
 commercial set in Daneford there was no 
 one else known by the name of Wat. 
 They called him Wat in preference to 
 Henry or Harry, because there is not 
 
68 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 perhaps among all the Christian names 
 one which admits of such an mtmiatety 
 familiar contraction as Walter. 
 
 But all the banqueting and largess did 
 not disenchant the ominous mansion. 
 
 Those who had been at the prodigal 
 house-warming always remembered the ex- 
 terior aspect of the house when the revels 
 were at their height as even worse than 
 the ordinary appearance ; for the small 
 red windows in the thick dark walls 
 looked at night like the eyes of a desperate 
 man who had drank deeply to keep up 
 his courage in some supreme ordeal. 
 And by day ever afterwards, to those who 
 had been in the house at the festival, it 
 seemed as though the house looked more 
 aghast than ever, like the face of one 
 who, having slept off the artificial courage, 
 had awaked to reduced resources and 
 increased dangers. 
 
HAPTEE IV. 
 
 A2r UHSKLFEKH MOTHER. 
 
 An :Lr i ::: = __~er. \~ M: - ~ 
 
 the Manor House re men's parties. Mrs 
 t rarely or n was to be found 
 
 in the drawing-room after dinner ; and, 
 indeed, the drawing -room wa- lorn 
 
 lighted np. 
 
 Mrs a pretty, lovr - :: 1. dark- 
 
 :"-i. nervous woman, a few a the 
 
 junior of her husbandL He had met her 
 first in London, in a house where she 
 staying on a visit with friends. She 
 was alone in the world, had a small 
 fortune, which, while it made her no 
 
70 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 object of pursuit in the circle she 
 frequented, kept her independent. 
 
 There was a little mystery and a 
 little doubt about her, and while neither 
 the mystery nor the doubt was sufficient 
 to disquiet anyone, it served to keep 
 interest in her alive, and the more prudent 
 and calculating of suitors from love- 
 making. Individually she was popular ; 
 but while those who knew her spoke well 
 of her in her absence, the good things 
 said of her always began in superlatives, 
 and, as the conversation went on, diminished 
 to positives, and the talk usually ended 
 with a vague " but " and an unfinished 
 sentence. 
 
 Perhaps she was a little odd, they 
 said. Perhaps she had French blood in 
 her veins. Perhaps the strange blood was 
 Spanish. She had a look not wholly 
 English — a look denoting no close kinship 
 with any other people. Her name was 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 71 
 
 Muir, which seemed to indicate that she 
 came of a stock north of the Tweed. Yet 
 she had never been in Scotland, nor her 
 father before her, nor anyone of his 
 side, as far as he could trace back. Her 
 mother had been the daughter of a Truro 
 solicitor, her father a member of the 
 Equity bar of London. Those who had 
 known her father and mother declared 
 that she resembled neither in her face 
 nor her manner. She was dark, low- 
 sized, and odd ; they had both been 
 tall, fair, and models of conventional 
 insipidity. 
 
 When Henry Walter Grey married 
 Miss Muir she was twenty-four years of 
 age, he twenty-nine. The women judged 
 her to be thirty-four, the men allowed 
 that she might be twenty-seven ; but all 
 agreed that young Grey, with his prospects, 
 might have done much better as far as 
 money went. 
 
72 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 But among the young and the chivalric 
 of Daneford, young Grey helped forward 
 his nascent popularity by marrying a poor 
 wife and risking his father's displeasure 
 for his sweetheart's sake. The young and 
 chivalric of Daneford were never tired of 
 pointing to the pleasantest and most pros- 
 perous man in the city as one who had 
 made his love paramount above all other 
 considerations in the selection of a wife. 
 
 From the time he won his wife until 
 he lost her his manner towards her gained 
 him daily increase of respect among the 
 people of the city. Every indulgence and 
 luxury which his position could afford were 
 lavished upon her. Wives who had cause 
 of displeasure or dissatisfaction with their 
 husbands always cited Mr. Grey as a 
 shining contrast to their own too economical 
 or exacting lords. It was not alone that 
 she was never denied anything for which 
 she could reasonably care, but, notwith- 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 73 
 
 standing the clubs and the institutions 
 and the boards of which Mr. Grey was a 
 member, no more domestic man lived in 
 Daneford. He always dined at home, 
 except on occasions of great public interest ; 
 and when he had no guests he sat reading 
 or conversing with her, or they both went 
 for a stroll in the fine twilight, or visited 
 the theatre, or any other form of public 
 amusement afforded by the town. 
 
 - As the years of their married life glided 
 by, and no child came to make an endear- 
 ing interruption to the smooth course of 
 wedded sweethearts, the attachment between 
 the husband and wife seemed to borrow 
 a greater depth from the soft melancholy 
 arising out of their childless condition. 
 It was, the town said, a thousand pities 
 the rich, amiable, amusing, good-looking 
 Wat Grey had no one to leave his fine 
 business and his vast fortune to. 
 
 If a friend alluded to the fact of his 
 
74 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 childlessness lie always put the subject 
 aside with as little humour and as much 
 gentleness as the character of the speaker 
 allowed of. To his wife, who often made 
 tearful allusions to the circumstance, he 
 replied with cheerful hopefulness, and bade 
 her set her grief for him away, as he was 
 quite content and happy with the bles- 
 sings Heaven had already sent him, chief 
 among which was a wife he loved. 
 
 Although Mrs. Grey did not go into 
 society, and had no ladies to dinner, she 
 had a few visiting friends upon whom 
 she called in turn, and who learned from 
 her the uniform kindliness of her husband, 
 and the great gentleness with which he 
 accepted the absence of an heir or heiress. 
 
 In fact, the more people heard of 
 Mr. Grey, the more he grew in popular 
 esteem, and behind all this amiability on 
 his part there was a factor which hugely 
 multiplied its value. At first, when he 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 75 
 
 brought his wife home to Daneford, and 
 the people of his set began to know her 
 a little, they all declared that she was 
 pretty, very pretty, and a trifle odd. 
 
 Time went on, and although she lost 
 none of her prettiness with her years — 
 hers being the beauty that depends on 
 bone and outline, and not on surface and 
 colour — her peculiarities gained upon her ; 
 and whether, the Daneforcl folk said, it 
 was the foreign blood that darkened her 
 eyes and her hair and her ways, or a 
 slight strain of madness, they could not 
 decide, but she was, beyond all doubt, 
 not in manner like the average English- 
 woman of her class. 
 
 At first her peculiarities defied defini- 
 tion. People said she was very nice, but 
 a little queer, cracked, crazy. She was 
 very impulsive, and sometimes incoherent. 
 No action of hers seemed the result of 
 forethought or preparation. She ordered 
 
76 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 the servants to bring this, that, or the 
 other thing, and when they came with it 
 she told them they might take it away 
 again, as she had changed her mind. She 
 ordered the brougham for four, went 
 out walking at a quarter to four, and 
 stayed out till six, without countermanding 
 the brou or ham. 
 
 About the time that Mr. Grey bought 
 the Manor House, Mrs. Grey had a differ- 
 ence with her cook, and her cook left her 
 in a violent temper. The cook had been 
 with her ever since Mrs. Grey had first 
 come to Daneford, and was the confidential 
 servant of her mistress. Soon after the 
 cook had left it reached the ears of a few 
 acquaintances of Mr. Grey that a dreadful 
 spectre had aj)peared in his household. 
 The fact that Mrs. Grey had now 
 been married some years and was still 
 childless had ju-eyed very deeply on her 
 excitable temperament, and, dreadful to 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 77 
 
 say, she not unfrecjuently took more wine 
 than was good for her. 
 
 Those who heard this now saw a reason, 
 unguessed by others, why the banker 
 bought that odious house swathed round 
 with that fearful wood. There his wife 
 would be secluded, free from prying eyes 
 and guarded against any close daily contact 
 with neighbours. How had it been kept 
 secret so long ? The cook, now discharged, 
 had obtained for the unhappy woman 
 what she wanted, and the poor lady was 
 wonderfully discreet and cautious, and 
 until that servant went no one but 
 the cook and the afflicted husband 
 ever dreamed of such a thing. It was 
 dreadful. 
 
 But the most intimate friend of Grey 
 never knew from him, by even the faintest 
 hint, there was a single cloud over his 
 domestic happiness. 
 
 He always spoke of his wife in terms 
 
78 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 of the most tender consideration and kind- 
 liness. He was by no means weak or 
 nxorions ; hut there was a loyal trust, an 
 ever-active sympathy in him towards her, 
 that won greatly on the young and old 
 men and women of Daneford. 
 
 The evil circumstance under which 
 Mrs. Grey laboured was never an open 
 scandal in the town. In the first place, 
 owing to her own great prudence and 
 circumspection, no one had any suspicion 
 of the melancholy fact from herself. If 
 she was the victim of a debasing weakness, 
 she never betrayed herself publicly, and 
 those who heard of it through indirect 
 ways had kept the secret closely, out of 
 respect to the man whose fame and name 
 and popularity stood so high among his 
 fellow-citizens. Indeed, some who heard 
 the rumour disbelieved it wholly, and 
 declared their conviction that it was the 
 malicious invention of a discharged servant, 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 79 
 
 based on the eccentric habits and unfamiliar 
 ways of the poor lady. 
 
 But the fact remained that, even to 
 the spacious Manor House, no lady guests 
 were invited to dinner ; no lady guests 
 stayed for twenty-four hours ; and, beyond 
 a few afternoon callers, no ladies visited 
 the house at all. But perhaps in Daneford 
 there were not a dozen families in posses- 
 sion of the fact that would account for 
 the strict retirement in which the mistress 
 of the Manor lived, and the young and 
 the chivalric continued to look on Grey 
 and his wife as not only the most 
 prosperous, but also the most happy, 
 couple in the whole county. 
 
 Very soon after Henry Grey's marriage 
 with Miss Muir, he found out that she 
 did not possess the solid good sense and 
 grave discernment essential in the confidant 
 of a banker. 
 
 She not only lacked the golden faculty 
 
80 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 of silence, but dealt with facts communi- 
 cated to her in a most imaginative and 
 injudicious manner. He told her that a 
 substantial and solvent merchant of the 
 town had overdrawn his account five 
 hundred pounds. Shortly after, the mer- 
 chant's wife called on Mrs. Grey, and the 
 latter, in a moment of communicativeness, 
 said to the former that business was in a 
 bad way, and that she understood the 
 former's husband owed the Bank, over and 
 above ordinary business, no less a sum 
 than five thousand pounds. The merchant's 
 wife related this to her husband, and 
 he came in great indignation to Grey. 
 Mr. Grey said his wife's talk had been 
 only woman's gossip, and that he had 
 most certainly never told his wife or any 
 one else the merchant owed the Bank five 
 thousand pounds over-draught. 
 
 The merchant said he was quite sure 
 Mr. Grey had not, but urged that some- 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 81 
 
 thing of the over-draught must have been 
 communicated to Mrs. Grey, and that a 
 woman's gossip was quite capable of ruining 
 a solvent man. 
 
 On another occasion the banker told 
 her the Bank had not made as much- 
 money that year as the year before, and 
 she informed some chance callers that the- 
 Bank was losing heavily. This rumour- 
 might have shaken the credit of air 
 institution less solidly established than the- 
 Daneford Bank ; but in the city and 
 country surrounding the city the Bank 
 was looked upon as much more safe than 
 the Bank of England, insomuch as the 
 Threadneedle Street concern had a paper 
 currency, and the Daneford did not mort- 
 gage any of its capital by such an issue, 
 and stood in no temptation to diminish 
 its stock of gold or overstep safety. 
 
 These two experiences of Grey's, coupled 
 with a few others of less importance but 
 
 vol. I. 6 
 
S2 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 similar nature, convinced him that the 
 more general and abstract his statements 
 of business matters to his wife the better, 
 and from the moment he arrived at this 
 conclusion he carried it into effect. She, 
 having no talent for the particular, did 
 not seem to miss his confidence, and 
 remained perfectly content with common- 
 place generalities as to business matters. 
 Indeed, having very little of the highly 
 feminine virtue of incjuisitiveness, she was 
 not much interested in business statements 
 of any kind. 
 
 Most men will talk more freely to a 
 woman whom they trust than to any man, 
 no matter how near to them by ties of 
 nature or affection. Henry Grey was no 
 exception to the rule, and when he found 
 he durst no longer confide important 
 secrets to his wife, he unburdened himself 
 to another woman, a widow, now past 
 seventy, but still straight and intelligent, 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 83 
 
 and sympathetic and hale, a woman who 
 had won and retained a most powerful 
 hold upon his esteem, affection, and con- 
 fidence — his mother. 
 
 Whilst all the world of Daneford was 
 calculating the enormous fortune the Dane-, 
 ford Bank must be making for its owner, 
 and was bemoaning the fact that Wat 
 Grey had no child to leave his fine business 
 and his vast savings to, there were two 
 people the nature of whose anxiety about 
 Mr. Grey's affairs did not take the same 
 course. 
 
 These two people were the only beings 
 possessing knowledge of the condition 
 of Mr. Grey's private fortune and the 
 bank. 
 
 For years he had kept the true state 
 of affairs from his mother, but at length, 
 as blow succeeded blow, he could no longer 
 bear the burden of his secret, and he un- 
 folded it to her. He did not trouble her 
 
84 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 with detail, but informed her briefly that 
 he had backed the South in the American 
 wars — that not only had he lost all his 
 own private fortune, but of the depositors' 
 money as well. 
 
 At first she was overwhelmed with 
 surprise and horror to think the splendid 
 business and reputation made for the 
 Bank by her dead husband and his father 
 before him should be ruined by her son, 
 and that not only had the Bank been 
 ruined and her son's fortune and position 
 destroyed, but the moneys of the clients 
 had also been included in the horrible 
 disaster. 
 
 But, despite her seventy years, she was 
 a brave old lady, full of honour and spirits 
 and courage. Once the first shock was 
 over, she set all her faculties at work to 
 try and sustain the drooping energies of 
 her only son. 
 
 She know he was not free from troubles 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 85 
 
 at home ; she knew he gave none of his 
 business confidences to his wife. Though 
 she deplored these facts, she felt there 
 was no help for them ; and if at first 
 reluctant to assist him in councils which 
 ought to be held between him and his 
 wife, in the end she saw it would be the 
 wisest course for her to listen, to encourage 
 him to speak, and to aid him with any 
 advice she might think it wise to give. 
 
 Apparently, however, the affairs of the 
 Bank were beyond the aid of advice. At 
 every interview between mother and son 
 he assured her he saw no opening in 
 the clouds ; that, in fact, they got blacker 
 and blacker as time wore on. 
 
 Towards the beginning of 1866 things 
 had, the son told the mother, come to 
 the worst. 
 
 "All is lost," he said; " all is lost. 
 I have been staving off and staving off 
 until everything has got into a hopeless 
 
86 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 tangle, out of which I can find but one 
 thing — ruin !" 
 
 "Then, Henry, I suppose you must 
 shut the door ; and as you see nothing 
 else for it, the sooner you stop up the 
 better. " 
 
 " Mother, the day I shut the Bank 
 door I'll open another door." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 " I'll open the door into the other 
 world with a charge of gunpowder." 
 
 " Don't say such a foolish, dreadful 
 thing ! You are not, I hope, such a 
 coward as to fly from the consequences 
 of your own act. If you have lost the 
 money in fair trading you need not be 
 ashamed to meet them all ; others beside 
 you lost by that unfortunate South. Your 
 father would have stood his ground and 
 faced the city," said the old woman, with 
 spirit and pride. 
 
 " No doubt, mother, no doubt my 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 87 
 
 father would have had the manliness to 
 stand and face the break ; but he was a 
 man of great endurance and nerve ; you 
 know I am not. I would do anything 
 rather than meet such a crash and live 
 after it. You know I have been much 
 more out in the world than my father. 
 I am mixed up with such a number of 
 things, am closely connected with such a 
 number of institutions and men, that 
 nothing, no consideration, could induce me 
 to outlive bankruptcy. The people would 
 not believe facts ; they would not credit 
 any statement, however plain, that I was 
 insolvent. They would say that I had 
 appropriated the money of the depositors, 
 made a fraudulent pretence of bankruptcy, 
 and concealed the money for my own use. 
 I know the world better than you, mother ; 
 I know the world, and what it would say. 
 I may be popular now; but if I fell, the 
 street-boys might kick me through the 
 
THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 gutter and no one would take my part, 
 or try to get me fair play." 
 
 He dropped his head into his hands 
 and shuddered. 
 
 The old woman looked at him with a 
 sad sympathy, which was not wholly des- 
 titute of reproach. 
 
 "You know, Henry, thousands of men 
 have had to face such things, and have 
 come out of their difficulties without a 
 stain or a hard word " 
 
 (i In my case that is impossible. I tell 
 you, mother, they would have no more 
 mercy on me than on a snake. The Bank 
 is a private one, the property of one person, 
 and on that one person all the wrath would 
 fall. It is not like a joint stock, or a 
 limited liability, where many are concerned 
 as principals or shareholders or directors. 
 It would be a case between an individual 
 and his creditors. It would look as if I 
 had borrowed money privately of all the 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 89 
 
 people I knew, and spent it or gambled in 
 dangerous foreign speculations, until I had 
 dissipated their last pennies and left the 
 people beggars. No, mother ; the day I 
 shut the Bank door I open the gate of 
 Eternity with a bullet." 
 
 He was walking up and down his 
 mother's drawing-room, with his hands 
 clasped behind -his coat, his eyes bent on 
 the ground, and a look of concentrated 
 thought upon his usually placid and beam- 
 ing features. 
 
 " I will not hear you say that again, 
 Henry," cried the mother, stamping her 
 foot impatiently on the floor. "Listen 
 to me. You know my two thousand a 
 year is clear of the Bank " 
 
 " Thank Heaven and my father for 
 that ! " cried Grey earnestly. 
 
 " Can't you shut up the Bank, and 
 you and Bee " — Beatrice, his wife — " come 
 and stay with me for a while ? We could 
 
90 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 leave England and live on a thousand a 
 year in the south of France, or anywhere 
 you like, and save up a thousand a year 
 to start you again " 
 
 " I would die ten thousand deaths, dear 
 mother, rather than touch your money," 
 he cried fervently, catching her hand and 
 holding it in both his, and opening his 
 hands now and then to kiss the shrivelled 
 hand which had once, when soft and full, 
 joined his — then softer and fuller — in 
 prayer, and now, when he was strong and 
 she was weak, tried to shield and succour 
 him as in the days wdien he was a little 
 child. 
 
 " Don't be sentimental at such a crisis," 
 cried his mother petulantly. "You shall 
 do as I say ; or if you like, when the Bank 
 affair is settled, we can sell the annuity. 
 I know I'm old, and it's not worth many 
 years' purchase ; but we should get a few 
 thousand for it, and that would give you 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 91 
 
 a fresh start in some other business. Now 
 I tell you this is what shall happen. Do 
 you hear me ? I will not wait for your 
 consent ; this very day I will see about 
 selling the annuity — what clo you call it ? 
 capitalising it ? Go, Henry, and no more 
 nonsense about gunpowder and bullets. 
 Such things are only fit for the stage 
 or the Continent, and are quite beneath 
 the notice of a sensible English man of 
 business." 
 
 He rose to his feet and cried : " You 
 shall not, you must not, mother. I have 
 been making out things worse than they 
 really are. I am depressed and ill. Believe 
 me, there is no need for doing what you 
 say. There is one venture of mine, in no 
 way connected with the late war, the 
 greatest of all my ventures ; and although 
 I do not look on it as a very safe or sound 
 venture, it may come all right yet. I 
 shall know in a fortnight. You must 
 
m THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 promise me to do nothing until then. 
 Promise me, my dear mother ! " 
 
 He spoke eagerly, passionately ; and 
 as he uttered the final words he caught 
 both her hands in his, and looked be- 
 seechingly into her eyes. 
 
 "And in a fortnight you will tell 
 me?" she asked, looking searchingly into 
 his face. 
 
 "In a fortnight I will tell you." 
 
 "And between this and then you will 
 not, in my presence or in your own secret 
 mind, speak or think about such nonsense 
 as daggers or poison-bowls, or gunpowder 
 or bullets?" she asked scornfully. 
 
 "I promise I will not." 
 
 " Very well," she said ; "I will do 
 nothing till I hear from you at the end 
 of a fortnight. Let us shake hands, Henry, 
 and part friends." 
 
 "Friends!" he exclaimed, as tears of 
 love and sorrow came into his eyes. 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 93 
 
 "Mother, you are the only one on earth 
 I love now." 
 
 " Hush, sir ! How dare you say suck 
 a thing I" 
 
 "I swear it!" he cried vehemently. 
 " I would do anything, dare anything, for 
 you, mother " 
 
 "And for your wife," she added, as if 
 reminding him of an omission made in 
 carelessness. 
 
 He paid no attention to her suggestion. 
 
 "You are the only one in the world 
 who knows me really." 
 
 "And longest," she added, with a 
 bright smile. "There — go now, Henry;. 
 this scene is growing theatrical or Con- 
 tinental, and unbecoming the drawing-room 
 of an English mother. There — go." 
 
 And she hustled him to the door, 
 opened the door, thrust him out, and closed 
 the door upon him. 
 
 As soon as she was sure he had left 
 
94 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 the vicinity of the door she threw herself 
 clown on a couch and burst into tears, 
 exclaiming softly to herself between the 
 sobs : 
 
 " My Wat ! my poor Wat ! my darling 
 child, is it come to this with you?" 
 
 Then after a while she dried her eyes 
 and sat up. "Perhaps all may go well 
 with him after all. Perhaps this venture 
 of his may come right. It was lucky I 
 got him out of the room so soon. Another 
 moment and I should have broken down, 
 and been more dramatic and Continental 
 than he, and that would never do. No 
 son respects or relies on a mother who 
 weeps on his bosom, and causes him to 
 remember she is not his earliest and 
 strongest friend." 
 
 In the strong-room of the Daneford 
 Bank all the money and securities held by 
 the bank were kept. The last duty of 
 Mr. Aldridge, manager of the Daneford 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 95 
 
 Bank, each day, was to return the cash, 
 bills, books, &c, to this strong-room. To 
 this strong-room there were three keys in 
 the possession of the staff of the bank, 
 one held by the manager, one by the 
 accountant, and one by the teller. 
 
 The door could not be opened save by 
 the aid of the three keys. Thus no officer 
 of the Bank could commit a larceny in 
 the strong-room without the countenance 
 of two others. 
 
 Mr. Grey had duplicates of the keys 
 held by the accountant and teller. But 
 the key held by the manager was 
 unique, and even Mr. Grey himself could 
 not enter the strong-room without the 
 manager's key. 
 
 In this strong-room were kept not only 
 the valuables of the bank, but cases and 
 chests containing all kinds of highly port- 
 able and extremely precious substances 
 and papers belonging to customers of the 
 
96 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Bank. Here were iron plate-chests, iron 
 deed-boxes, jewel-caskets in great numbers, 
 left for safe keeping, not being part of 
 the Bank's property, and against which 
 there was no charge by the Bank but an 
 almost nominal one for storage. 
 
 The evening after Mr. Grey had that 
 interview with his mother, he called at 
 the Bank, found the manager in, and 
 having told Mr. Aldridge that a secret 
 report had reached him to the disadvan- 
 tage of a customer whose name he was 
 not allowed to disclose, he wished to 
 borrow the manager's key for half an 
 hour, as he wanted to turn over the 
 suspected man's account. 
 
 He got the key and a candle, and 
 went down to the strong-room. In half 
 an hour he returned, and handing back 
 the key to Mr. Aldridge, said : "I am 
 glad to say that the account I spoke of 
 is quite satisfactory, and that it will not 
 
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER. 97 
 
 be necessary to make any alteration in 
 our dealings with the customer I alluded 
 to." 
 
 The next day Mr. Grey went to 
 London, and returned the evening after. 
 A few days later, among the letters was 
 an advice from Mr. Grey's London cor- 
 respondents to the effect that Messrs. 
 Barrington, Ware, & Duncan had lodged 
 twenty thousand pounds with them to 
 Mr. Grey's credit. 
 
 That day Mr. Grey called upon his 
 mother, and told her some of the 
 expected good luck had come — not all, 
 but still twenty thousand out of the 
 fire. 
 
 " I told you, Henry, you had only to 
 wait and face it, and you would win. If 
 you did any of those romantic and foolish 
 things with daggers and poison -bowls, 
 they would say you were little better 
 than a thief." 
 
 vol. I. 7 
 
98 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 " Now they could not even say as 
 much," he said softly to himself. 
 
 "What are you dreaming about now!" 
 his mother cried, in exasperation. 
 
 He looked up with one of his best 
 and brightest smiles, and said : " Dreams, 
 madam ! nay, it is. I know not dreams ; " 
 and kissing his mother to punctuate his 
 parody, he smiled again, and added : "I 
 was only joking, just to enjoy the sight 
 of your anger now that things are looking 
 better. Good-bye." 
 
 And so he left her. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 
 
 The city of Daneford, on the river Wees- 
 lade, is about eighteen miles from the 
 small watering-town, Seacliff, which stands 
 in a little bay at the mouth of the river. 
 Between Daneford and Seacliff the width 
 of the river varies, but is never less than 
 a mile. 
 
 At a distance of less than four miles 
 from the city the river widens considerably 
 into a loop, and in the loop is the island 
 of Warfinger. The island, which rarely is 
 called by its particular name, but is spoken 
 of as "The Island," measures a mile long 
 by half a mile broad. It rises gradually 
 
100 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 from the shores to the centre, and on the 
 highest point of it stands Island Castle, 
 the seat of the Midharsts for generations. 
 In the neighbourhood the title of Island 
 Castle is cut down also, and no one at 
 all familiar with the locality ever calls it 
 anything but " The Castle." 
 
 In the early part of the year 1866 
 the tenant for life of Island Castle was 
 old Sir Alexander Midharst, a widower, 
 who lived in the Castle in great retire- 
 ment and the meanest economy. His wife 
 had then been dead twenty years. She 
 had died in giving birth to her only 
 child, Maud, now rapidly approaching her 
 majority ; a girl of such gentle beauty 
 and simple childlike manners that all who 
 met her spoke of her beauty and her 
 grace with tender respect and ready 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Maud Midharst did not need any adven- 
 titious aid to make her beauty apparent 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 101 
 
 and her presence acceptable, but her deli- 
 cate complexion, her dark sweet eyes, her 
 pleasant smile, all came out in strong con- 
 trast with her surroundings at the Castle. 
 
 In the building everything, including 
 the structure itself, seemed hastening to 
 decay. The walls, the floor, the furniture, 
 the servants, the master, all were old. 
 She formed the one exception to the 
 general appearance of approaching dis- 
 solution. The outer walls of the pile 
 were seamed and lined, the water had 
 eaten into the stone, the frost had 
 cracked the mortar, and unsightly yellow 
 stains lay upon the masonry, like long 
 skeleton fingers pointing to the earth into 
 which the walls were hastening. 
 
 When castles were places of defence as 
 well as of residence, Island Castle was well 
 known. It had stood two sieges, and had 
 been a famous place of meeting among 
 the Jacobites. Its insular position, the 
 
102 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 wide prospect it commanded, the fact 
 that it could not be invested on all sides 
 at once except by a whole array, the 
 facilities it afforded to approach and flight 
 of friends, and the difficulty, amounting 
 almost to an impossibility, of reaching it 
 by surprise except under the favour of 
 night or a fog, all added together made 
 it a place of great importance once upon 
 a time. 
 
 The Castle had not always been in 
 the Midharst family. It had come to 
 them early in the eighteenth century, 
 upon the failure in heirs male of the 
 great Fleurey family, by which failure the 
 historic earldom of Stancroft was lost to 
 the blood for ever. The Midharsts had 
 some of the female Fleurey blood in their 
 veins, but it was of distant origin ; and 
 title to the fine castle and property was 
 declared to Sir John Midharst, the first 
 of his name who laid claim to it, only 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 103- 
 
 after long and expensive litigation and 
 much scandal. 
 
 Up to that time the Midharsts had 
 been poor baronets. The property accom- 
 panying the Island in the year 1866 
 brought in a rental of more than twenty- 
 two thousand pounds a year. 
 
 It was a very singular fact that from 
 the first baronet who sat as master in 
 Warfinger Island Castle down to old Sir 
 Alexander, no son succeeded a father. It 
 was always a grandson or a nephew, or 
 a grand-nephew or some remote cousin. 
 Now matters were worse than ever. Sir 
 Alexander was upwards of seventy years 
 of age, with an only child, a daughter, 
 and the closest male was a direct de- 
 scendant of the youngest son of the 
 baronet, the lucky Sir John who came in 
 for the property that had supported the 
 extinct earldom of Stancroft. 
 
 No doubt this remote cousin was a 
 
104 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Midliarst in name and blood, but some- 
 how it was hard for Sir Alexander to 
 feel very cordial or friendly towards one 
 so remote from him, one who was going 
 to take the property and the title away 
 from his immediate family. 
 
 At the time Lady Midliarst died Sir 
 Alexander was but a little over fifty years 
 of age, and many thought he would marry 
 again. But even then he was ailing, and 
 doctors told him that between asthma and 
 valvular derangement of the heart his 
 chance of living even a few years was 
 slight. Of course, they said, he might 
 live fifty years, but he was heavily 
 handicapped. 
 
 As long as his wife, who had been 
 much younger than he, lived he continued 
 to hope for an heir ; but upon the death 
 of Lady Midliarst, having ascertained the 
 precise nature and import of the diseases 
 from which he suffered, he made up his 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 105 
 
 mind to give up all thought of an heir, and 
 devote himself wholly to making a suitable 
 provision for his daughter Maud, who was 
 healthy and well-grown, and promised to 
 be strong and long-lived. 
 
 And now began with Sir Alexander 
 Midharst the practices by which he dis- 
 graced his order, and made himself a 
 byword for all who knew his habits and 
 his name. 
 
 He shut up his London house and 
 advertised it to be let. A rich distiller 
 took it furnished at two hundred pounds 
 a month during the season, and a manu- 
 facturing jeweller for eighty pounds a 
 month during the unfashionable periods 
 of the year. 
 
 He sold his horses and carriages, all 
 save one old state coach, which he could 
 not sell for two reasons ; first, because 
 its preservation and " maintenance " were 
 provided for by his predecessors ; and 
 
10G THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 secondly, because no one would pay 
 haulage for it from the Island to the 
 city. 
 
 He dismissed all his servants but the 
 housekeeper, one maid, and one man, allow- 
 ing, however, a nurse and "governess" for 
 the baby, who yet lacked of three months. 
 He resigned the membership of his two 
 London clubs, of the three county clubs 
 he belonged to, and intimated to all 
 institutions or bodies or guilds to which 
 he was patron, chairman, subscriber, or 
 member, that his connection in any way 
 with them must cease. 
 
 He discharged his steward, and resolved 
 upon collecting his own rents and super- 
 intending his own property. 
 
 Up to this anyone who chose might 
 go over his fine old Castle. Anyone 
 still might go over the Castle, but an 
 entrance fee of one shilling was now 
 demanded from each sightseer. 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 107 
 
 As time advanced, and lie became 
 more imbued with avarice, more expert in 
 meanness, lie cut and shaved and clipped 
 here and there and everywhere, until he 
 had reduced his expenditure to about a 
 thousand a year. 
 
 But he did not rest content with 
 cutting down his own expenses ; he was 
 fully as careful to increase his income by 
 every means in his power. 
 
 When leases expired they were renewed 
 only on payment of heavy fines. His 
 care was not so much to inflate the rent- 
 roll as to get in all the ready-money he 
 could. He had, he calculated, only a few 
 years, if so long, to live, and the rent- 
 roll would then be the concern of that 
 William Midharst whom he had never 
 seen and whom he wished never to see. 
 
 He cut down and sold all the timber 
 as far as his right to do so extended ; 
 and all the trimming and underwood,. 
 
108 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 which had previously been allowed to go 
 as perquisites to the men or as gleaning 
 among the poor, he took possession of 
 and sold. 
 
 He let the right of shooting over 
 his land and the right of fishing in his 
 streams and rivers. He sold off all he 
 might of the more modern furniture at 
 the Castle. 
 
 He sold all his personal plate and 
 jewels, and all the pictures he had 
 acquired in his lifetime. When he was 
 young he had made a collection of coins ; 
 this, too, he converted into cash. 
 
 At one time he contemplated letting 
 one wing of the Castle to a rich tallow- 
 chandler of the city, and was absolutely 
 in treaty with him, when with a shudder 
 of shame he drew back and broke off 
 the negotiations. 
 
 When he commenced his scheme of 
 economy and exactions, he had said to 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 109 
 
 himself that if he pursued it for one 
 year, and sold off all the things he then 
 contemplated, he should be able to leave 
 his baby-girl close on forty thousand 
 pounds. At the end of twelve months 
 he found he had put more money together 
 than he had anticipated. There was no 
 new cause of anxiety with regard to his 
 health, and he made up his mind to 
 continue upon the track he had adopted. 
 He might live a year, ay, two years yet ; 
 if he lasted two years more the leases of 
 Garfield estate would fall in, and he should 
 reap a harvest out of renewals. Give 
 him two years more, that is, three from 
 the beginning, and he should be able 
 to leave his only child close upon one 
 hundred thousand pounds. 
 
 At the end of the three years he 
 found he had not come within several 
 thousand pounds of his limit ; so he re- 
 solved to complete the hundred thousand 
 
110 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 before" lie changed his manner of living 
 or of dealing with the property. 
 
 When the end of the fourth year was 
 reached he had saved more than the 
 hundred thousand pounds. By this time 
 he had become accustomed to the loss of 
 all his old associations, had grown to love 
 the new, and, above all, had become the 
 slave of avarice, that most inflexible and 
 enduring of all the passions. Therefore, 
 he threw all idea of change to the winds, 
 and resolved as long as he lived, whether 
 for a week or twenty years, to save all 
 the money he could, in order that the 
 descendants of his side of the family 
 might be able to hold up their heads 
 hereafter. 
 
 At the death of his wife Sir Alexander 
 Midharst closed his London banking account 
 and transferred all his business to the 
 Daneford Bank, where he had had an 
 account when he came into the property, 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. Ill 
 
 and where his predecessor in the title had 
 also kept his account. 
 
 Now in money matters Sir Alexander 
 may have been a good sergeant, or even 
 on occasions a trustworthy captain ; but 
 he was no general, and he knew it. He 
 accordingly resolved to consult with Mr. 
 Grey, father of Wat. He explained the 
 whole scheme to the banker, and the 
 purpose for which the money was being 
 saved, and said that in the first place he 
 wanted to invest the money safely, and in 
 the second of course he wanted some 
 interest for it. 
 
 The banker suggested that for the 
 present the money should be invested 
 in the Three per Cent. Consols, which 
 could be realised readily should any more 
 desirable form of investment offer itself, 
 and where it would be as safe as in 
 land. 
 
 After some consideration Sir Alexander 
 
112 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 agreed to follow the banker's advice, on 
 the condition that Mr. Grey would buy 
 the stock, keep the account of it, with 
 the heirloom jewels and plate of Island 
 Castle, but that in this case Mr. Grey was 
 to retain the key of the chest containing 
 the valuables and transact all the busi- 
 ness connected with the Consols, such as 
 receiving dividends, crediting the amount, 
 and buying in more Consols with the 
 interest of the Consols themselves, and 
 any money Sir Alexander should lodge 
 to the Midharst (Consols) account. 
 
 " I shall save the money," said the 
 baronet, " and you will take care of 
 it. 
 
 And so it was arranged. Sir Alexander 
 gave the banker power- of-attorney with 
 regard to these Consols and all the money 
 lodged to their account for the future ; all 
 communications from the Bank of England, 
 of solicitors, or anyone else, were to be 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 113 
 
 addressed to Sir Alexander Midharst, Dane- 
 ford Bank, Daneford. These letters were 
 to be opened and attended to by Mr. Grey, 
 who was to make a reasonable charge for 
 the trouble. 
 
 Things went on thus until the elder 
 Mr. Grey's death, when the son succeeded 
 to the banking business and a considerable 
 private fortune in 1856. 
 
 Young Mr. Grey, as soon as he came 
 into the business, at once waited upon Sir 
 Alexander Midharst, and said he would 
 advise that some new plan should be 
 adopted with regard to the baronet's 
 business and accounts. 
 
 The baronet, who knew young Grey 
 very well, and liked him exceedingly, told 
 him that his father had managed the busi- 
 ness excellently, and that the son ought 
 to be able to do as well. 
 
 Young Grey said the responsibility was 
 very great, the sum being now more than 
 
 vol. i. 8 
 
114 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 two hundred thousand pounds over which 
 Grey had complete power. 
 
 The baronet took him by the hand and 
 said : 
 
 " You are a younger man than your 
 father, and ought not to be more timid. 
 Our family have known your bank before 
 now ; for my part, I am not able to take 
 charge of these things. I prefer your 
 guardianship to that of my lawyer's 
 or of anybody else. If your father 
 charged too little for the trouble, you 
 may charge more. You know the money 
 is for my little daughter : the estates go 
 to a stranger after my death ; and this 
 money is the fortune of my child, that 
 no man shall say she, a Midharst — 
 the last of the direct line, I may say — 
 was left penniless and portionless, though 
 she may be left homeless, on the world." 
 
 "As you put it now I cannot refuse," 
 answered young Grey. 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 115 
 
 " Look around you." They were in the 
 gateway leading to the court-yard, with 
 their faces turned towards the slope of the 
 hill. " Look around you. I have shorn 
 the land close for my child. I work night 
 and day for her, as though her daily bread 
 depended on my arms and my brain. I 
 may die any time. I have no friend, no 
 relative. I am alone with my child. 
 Everyone seems against me. That greedy, 
 rapacious young scoundrel who is to follow 
 me is looking with hungry eyes upon 
 Warfmger Island, and nightly praying for 
 my death. All my old friends have given 
 me up. I am not of them now, because 
 I have striven to make provision for my 
 child. They call me a sordid miser, a 
 stain upon the order I share with them. 
 Let them rave. I will do what I think 
 right by my child. Let them do as they 
 choose. I do not ask their help. I only 
 ask them to let me alone. But you I ask 
 
11G THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 to help me ; and you will, for you are not 
 ennobled by the accident of your birth, but 
 by the generosity of your nature." 
 
 If any power of wavering had remained 
 in young Grey, this appeal would have 
 overcome it. So the matter was finally 
 settled : the son was to act for the baronet 
 precisely as the father had acted before. 
 
 During the year 1856 Mr. Grey the 
 younger was a frequent visitor to Island 
 Castle. He liked boating ; and often in 
 the fine evenings pulled down the river 
 Weeslade to the Island, had a consultation 
 with Sir Alexander, and then pulled back 
 to Daneford in the sweet fresh twilight. 
 
 Often when it was growing dusk, and 
 he was about to start from the Island for 
 the city, he pushed off his boat into mid- 
 stream, and rested on his oars, looking 
 up at the mouldering Castle standing out 
 clear against the darkening sky. 
 
 There was something desolate and 
 
AN UNSELFISH FA THEE. 117 
 
 forlorn about that vast pile, inhabited 
 by that ageing man and that young girl. 
 
 In front, facing the wider water-passage, 
 it stood high above him, its blind gateway 
 looking down upon him, a lonely round 
 tower at the right of the archway catching 
 the strange gleams of light reflected from 
 the Weeslade as the river glided silently 
 towards the sea. 
 
 Winter and summer, when there was 
 sunshine at sunset, the top of that tower 
 caught the reflection of the last red streak 
 that flickered on the polished surface of 
 the river. This fact affected long ago the 
 superstitious feelings of the people. There 
 was a tradition in the neighbourhood that 
 in times gone by the wicked mother of a 
 Lord Stancroft used abominable witchcraft 
 against her daughter-in-law, her son's bride, 
 newly brought home from the kingdom of 
 Spain, a country far away, and near the 
 sun, and full of gallant men and fine 
 
118 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 ladies, whose eyes it were a marvellous 
 fine feast to see, but who were — the ladies 
 — treacherous and light of love. 
 
 The abominable and damnable exercises 
 rjractised by the wicked dowager caused 
 the dark-eyed Lady Stancroft, who had 
 come among strangers out of the far-away 
 kingdom of Spain, to wither up and grow 
 old and loathsome in a year. So that 
 the young lord turned away from her, and 
 cared nothing for her any more. And the 
 j)oor young lady, gap-toothed and wrinkled 
 and foul-looking as she had been made 
 by devilish witchcraft, was still young in 
 her mind and her affections, and doated 
 on the lord, who would not as much as 
 come nigh the Castle while she was there, 
 but took to wine and evil ways. 
 
 So at last the poor young wife, who 
 looked eighty, was lost, and could be found 
 nowhere. It was long after, and in the 
 time of the next lord, that, in the topmost 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 119 
 
 chamber of the round gate-tower, a chamber 
 never used save in war-time, they discovered 
 the skeleton of the young wife, and words 
 written in a strange tongue, the language 
 of Spain, saying how she had stolen up 
 there to die, as she could not win back 
 the love of her husband, the young lord.. 
 Ever after that the topmost chamber of 
 the tower was red at sunset. Some 
 thought this red gleam came from the fire 
 where the wicked dowager Lady Stancroft 
 suffered for her great sin ; others thought 
 this was the reflection from the wreath 
 of glory worn by the poor young wife. 
 But all agreed it had to do with the deed 
 of the wicked Lady Stancroft ; and so 
 they called the tower the Witch's Tower, 
 a name it bore until Walter Grey gave it 
 another. 
 
 The year 1856 was one full of remark- 
 able events in the life of Mr. Grey. In 
 it his father died ; he came into a con- 
 
120 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 siderable fortune ; he purchased a house ; 
 and grew to be a frequent visitor at Island 
 Castle, It often struck him as a peculiar 
 coincidence that in the same year he should 
 have become owner of the most remarkable 
 house near Daneford, and caretaker to the 
 fortune of the owner of the most remarkable 
 house in the whole district. 
 
 About that time he read an account 
 of a certain tree said to be in sympathy 
 with a certain tower. The idea was fresh 
 to him, and seemed to open up a new field 
 of speculation, and he dwelt upon it a 
 good deal. 
 
 One evening, as he was rowing from 
 the Castle to his own home, a thought 
 flashed into his mind. There was a strik- 
 ing coincidence in the fact of his beino- 
 connected so closely with two such houses. 
 Each was unpopular, each was weird, 
 strange ; there were queer stories about 
 each, each had a tower. The tower of 
 
AN UNSELFISH FATHER. 121 
 
 one had an unpleasant history connected 
 with the skeleton of that poor Spanish 
 lady ; the tower on his house had that 
 rusty framework of a tank that looked 
 like a skeleton. " Might not," he thought, 
 with a smile at the absurdity, " there 
 be some sympathy between these two 
 houses ? " 
 
 He ceased to row, and looked at the 
 vast pile that brooded over the dark 
 waters of the Weeslade. He rested upon 
 his oars. 
 
 " It looks, if like anything human, 
 like a witch charming the river. My 
 house, too, looks like a witch sitting at 
 bay within her magic circle of grove. It 
 wouldn't be bad to name them both 
 The Weird Sisters. They are uglier than 
 the crones in 'Macbeth.'" 
 
 He pulled a few strokes and mused 
 again, resting on his oars. 
 
 " They don't use that tower. I don't 
 
122 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 use my tower. They found the skeleton 
 of the Spanish Lady Stancroft in the top 
 of that tower. There's the skeleton of 
 that old tank on the top of mine. 
 Towers and skeletons suggest Bombay 
 and the Parsees. By Jove, the Towers 
 of Silence would not be a bad name for 
 those two." 
 
 Next day he told several people the 
 names he had given the two houses and 
 the two towers. All who heard of the 
 new nomenclature smiled, and admired 
 the cleverness ; and from that time forth 
 in Daneford the two houses were known 
 as the Weird Sisters, and the two towers- 
 as the Towers of Silence. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " TO THE ISLAND OR TO 
 
 Early in the year 1866 the Midharst 
 (Consols) account-book with the Daneford 
 Bank showed that, after deducting all 
 charges and paying all expenses, the prin- 
 cipal and interest reached the enormous 
 sum of five hundred and fifty thousand 
 pounds, enough to buy such a property 
 as the old baronet enjoyed. 
 
 By this time Sir Alexander had passed 
 out of middle life into age. He was now 
 thin and bent to one side, and very 
 weak, but still firm of purpose. He had 
 defeated the doctors by living so long ; 
 
124 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 he had defeated "that ungrateful whelp," 
 as he called his heir-presumptive. Of this 
 distant cousin he had no knowledge what- 
 ever ; he declined to listen to anything 
 about him. Why he called him ungrateful 
 no one ever knew ; he called him a whelp 
 because he was young. It was believed 
 that Sir Alexander had never in all his 
 life set eyes upon him, or even got an 
 account of the young man from one who 
 knew him. 
 
 At the time of his wife's death, the 
 baronet made outline enquiries through 
 his solicitor as to the age and descent 
 of the boy. In the year of Lady 
 Midharst's death, the boy, whose father 
 had been a poor naval officer, was aged 
 eight, having been born in 1838. The 
 boy's father had died at sea. There 
 could not be the shadow of a doubt 
 that this William Midharst was heir - 
 presumptive, and, if he lived, would 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 125 
 
 inherit the title and the property, should 
 Sir Alexander die without leaving a 
 son. 
 
 Little of the baronet's time was spent 
 with his daughter ; often a whole week 
 went by, and he did not pass more than 
 an hour of the whole time with her. 
 She had a suite of rooms for herself, 
 where she lived with Mrs. Grant, an 
 officer's widow, who knew much of the 
 world, and was now glad to accept 
 the position of lady's companion to the 
 baronet's only child. 
 
 Owing to the eccentric life led by 
 Sir Alexander, the facts that he saw no 
 company and had no intercourse with an} r 
 of the county families, Maud never went 
 into society, and was wholly dependent 
 on good sympathetic little Mrs. Grant 
 for any knowledge she might gain of the 
 great outside world. Mrs. Grant, who was 
 of a gay and pleasure-loving disposition. 
 
126 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 had no patience with the whims and 
 meannesses of the old man. 
 
 " You know, my dear," she said to 
 Maud, as they sat over their tea in 
 Maud's little drawing-room, "it's all very 
 well for Sir Alexander to go on saving 
 up money for you, so that you may be 
 a great heiress one of these days ; but 
 that isn't all. He treats you as if you 
 were a girl of twelve yet. Why, my 
 dear, I had been out three years before 
 I was your age, and had refused three or 
 four offers. I had, indeed. I know you 
 don't want offers, my dear ; but I did ; 
 for I was only a poor rector's daughter, 
 and hadn't even beauty to help me." 
 
 " Indeed I am sure you must have 
 been wonderfully pretty. You don't know 
 now nice you look now," replied the girl 
 softly. 
 
 "Ah, well, my dear, after a few 
 seasons you get to know all about your 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 127 
 
 good looks ; and then, my dear, after a 
 few seasons more yon get to know what 
 is of a great deal more consequence, all 
 your defects, or at least a good many. I 
 don't suppose any woman ever found out 
 all the weak points in her appearance, 
 <and that's a mercy. But as I was 
 saying — what was I saying ? " 
 
 " I think," said Maud, with an expres- 
 sion of great innocence, " that you were 
 blaming papa for never having given me 
 an opportunity of finding out the weak 
 jDoints in my personal appearance." 
 
 "Yes, that's it. That is, not quite it. 
 Maud, I won't have you twist things I 
 say in that way. You know I am always 
 for your good ; indeed I am." 
 
 " I am quite sure of it, dear Mrs. 
 Grant," returned the girl gratefully, and 
 with a trace of moisture in her large soft 
 eyes, as though she relented having taken 
 advantage of the other's impetuosity. 
 
128 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 The woman took her hand, and stroked 
 it briskly, and said : 
 
 "There, there, Maud, don't be silly. 
 Look at this very case in point. Why, 
 you turn sentimental over a few words 
 from an uninteresting middle-aged woman ! 
 Now is that a proper thing in an 
 heiress of twenty ? Why, my dear, 
 you'd have no account to give of offers 
 refused if once you went out. You'd 
 marry the first booby who asked you, 
 rather than disoblige him or cause him 
 pain." 
 
 " I shall never marry anyone I do 
 not love," said Maud, with an air of 
 quiet decision. 
 
 " Maud, be silent ; you are only a 
 school-girl, with a lot of sound rules in 
 your head, and not the least idea of 
 how they are applied, or where. I tell 
 you / know something of the world and 
 girls and love and marriage. I tell you, 
 
"TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 129 
 
 you'd marry the first stupid lout who 
 said to you : ' Maud, I love you ! ' 
 
 " Was the first who proposed to you 
 a stupid lout?" asked the girl simply. 
 
 " No, he wasn't ; at least I did think 
 he was then, but I afterwards knew 
 that he was the best of them all ; 
 and I was often sorry I did not take 
 him." 
 
 "And did he marry?" 
 
 " Yes ; he married a fool." 
 
 "Who had just come out — her first 
 season?" asked Maud, with her hands 
 folded serenely on her lap. 
 
 "Yes. But how did you guess?" 
 
 "Well, you see, you told me I should 
 marry the first stupid lout who asked 
 me, and I thought it likely a girl only 
 just out did marry the stupid lout who 
 proposed first to you." 
 
 "But, dear,. I told you he wasn't a 
 stupid lout ; then I thought he was stupid, 
 
 vol. I. 9 
 
130 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 and was often sorry afterwards — of course 
 I mean before I married — that I did not 
 accept him." 
 
 "This gives me more hope for my 
 own case. You see, the girl who had 
 only just come out took the man you 
 thought was a stupid lout, and was right 
 in taking him." 
 
 o 
 
 Maud looked up and smiled. 
 
 For a moment Mrs. Grant tapped her 
 foot impatiently on the carpet ; looked 
 hither and thither, rose a little hastily, 
 and cried: "Well, Maud, if you don't think 
 I have a very serious interest in what I 
 
 say, I will say " She paused, and 
 
 looked at the sweet, half-frightened face 
 of the girl. All at once her manner 
 underwent a change. She drew near the 
 girl, and putting her arm round her waist, 
 " I will say," she continued, " that whoever 
 gets you cannot help loving you. Men 
 are often bad, Maud darling ; but I don't 
 
11 TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 131 
 
 think there is one such a villain and a 
 fool as to be unkind to you." 
 
 As April of 1866 grew into May, the 
 asthmatic affection from which the old 
 baronet suffered abated ; but the valvular 
 defect of heart increased. He had fainted 
 three or four times in the month of 
 April, and in May his debility became so 
 great that he was unable to leave his 
 bed. Other symptoms now showed them- 
 selves, and complicated the case, and so 
 embarrassed the action of the heart that 
 the doctors declared he must expect a 
 speedy termination. Towards the end 
 of May the doctors declared he would 
 never rise from his bed. 
 
 The old man, whose spirit was in arms 
 against these doctors, would not believe 
 them. Twenty years ago they had told 
 him the same thing. 
 
 They said : No, the circumstances were 
 different. They had then said he might 
 
132 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 go at any moment ; things were worse 
 than that now. There was no longer 
 any chance of recovery, and the dread 
 was things would grow worse. 
 
 The doctors found it necessary to be 
 almost brutally candid with him, for they 
 had learned he had not yet made his- 
 will. 
 
 Insecure as was the tenure upon which 
 he had for the past twenty years held 
 his life, he had gone on from day to day 
 deferring the arrangement of his affairs 
 on the grounds that he was too busy, 
 and that if he made his will now he 
 should have to add codicils according 
 
 o 
 
 as his savings increased. His lawyer 
 assured him no such thing was neces- 
 sary, because, after all bequests had been 
 mentioned, he could leave his daughter 
 residuary legatee absolutely or with any 
 provisions and restrictions he liked to 
 impose. 
 
<• TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 133 
 
 As the lawyer had failed in the old 
 time the doctors failed now. But they 
 were resolved to leave no stone unturned 
 in their attempt to get him to settle his 
 affairs. The dying man's daughter was 
 too young, and too timid, and too closely 
 interested in the execution of the docu- 
 ment to think of asking her aid ; so 
 they resolved to summon Mrs. Grant, and 
 request her to press the matter home to 
 the mind of the invalid. 
 
 In the great banqueting-room the three 
 physicians in attendance sat when it was 
 resolved to invoke Mrs. Grant. 
 
 The vast apartment had been allowed 
 to fall almost into ruins. It was the 
 finest room in the house, and few houses 
 in either county that claimed the banks 
 of the Weeslade at this point could boast 
 so noble a chamber. 
 
 But twenty years of neglect had defiled 
 and defaced the room. The curtains were 
 
134 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 faded and worn, the hair grinned through 
 the torn covers of the fine old oak chairs. 
 Damp had attacked the moulding of the 
 picture frames, and here and there the 
 moulding had fallen off, leaving the bones, 
 of the discoloured frames exposed to view. 
 The ceiling, formed of oak cross-beams,, 
 with flowers and fruit pieces in the panels,, 
 had felt the corroding touch of wilful 
 Time. Here and there the canvas bulged 
 off the panel, and hung in loose flabby 
 blisters from the roof. The fine oak floor 
 had grown dull and woolly for want of 
 use and care. Sir Alexander kept no 
 servants to look after the apartments he 
 did not make use of, and refused to 
 allow even beeswax for the floors. 
 
 The dog-irons, which had stood watch 
 over the home-fire of generations of his 
 name and blood, were rusted. The 
 tapestries hanging across the doors, here 
 and there torn from their hooks, hung in 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 135 
 
 neglected disorder from the rods. The 
 hospitable greeting "Welcome," in blue 
 enamel in the wreath of carved vine-leaves 
 round the top of the huge sideboard, had 
 lost some of its letters. The glasses of 
 the lamps held by the bronze Nubian 
 slaves at the doors were reduced to half 
 their number. The leather thongs lacing 
 the suits of armour that held the groups 
 of candles at either end of the sideboard 
 had rotted and parted, and the helmets 
 and back and breast plates gaped at the 
 sutures. 
 
 The chamber smelt like a vault just 
 opened, and, although the weather was 
 bright and fine, all the furniture, the 
 walls, the floor, felt damp and slimy. 
 
 As soon as the doctors had finished 
 luncheon, Mrs. Grant was sent for. She 
 arrived in a state of great agitation ; she 
 feared that Sir Alexander was in the last 
 extremity. 
 
136 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Dr. Hardy, the senior physician, a 
 pale, soft-voiced, self-contained man of 
 few words, was the spokesman. He said : 
 
 "You will be glad to hear, and you 
 will be kind enough to inform Miss Mid- 
 harst, that there is no cause for any 
 alarm on account of the present condition 
 of Sir Alexander." 
 
 Mrs. Grant looked infinitely relieved. 
 Strange and unsympathetic a father as 
 the invalid had been, she did not like 
 the thought of having to tell anything 
 dreadful about him to Maud. 
 
 " I am glad to hear it. Shall I go 
 at once and tell Miss Midharst the good 
 news ? " 
 
 Dr. Hardy held up his hand with a 
 gesture which said quite plainly : "If you 
 will be so kind as to confine your attention 
 to me, you may rest assured of knowing 
 explicitly what I wish to have done in 
 this matter." Having allowed the gesture 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 137 
 
 a little while to sink into the mind of 
 Mrs. Grant, he went on with his lips : 
 
 " But" he said, with strong emphasis 
 on the conjunction, to show Mrs. Grant 
 that she had interrupted him, and that 
 he regarded the interruption as frivolous, 
 " the case has now arrived at that state 
 of progress when almost at any time the 
 patient's head may be attacked. Should 
 the head be attacked, Sir Alexander will 
 lose the possession of those mental gifts 
 and powers which he now possesses un- 
 diminished and unimpaired." 
 
 "Poor child !" cried the widow, thinking 
 of the guileless daughter of the stricken 
 man. 
 
 " And" continued Dr. Hardy, with the 
 same resolute emphasis on the conjunc- 
 tion, " we consider that he should be 
 at once induced to make his will, and 
 we have resolved to request you will 
 use your influence with him. We have 
 
138 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 tried and failed. May we count on 
 you?" 
 
 Mrs. Grant looked ujj with a half- 
 amused, half-astonished air. As soon as 
 she had somewhat recovered from her 
 surprise, she said very earnestly : 
 
 "There is nothing in this world I would 
 not try to do for Miss Midharst ; but 
 there is no more chance of Sir Alexander 
 listening to me on any business matter 
 than of his asking advice of the wind. 
 He believes women can and ought to 
 know nothing about business. It would 
 only vex him if I spoke of anything of 
 the kind to him." 
 
 The poor little woman looked quite 
 distressed and helpless. 
 
 The three men glanced from one to 
 the other in despair. In a few seconds. 
 Dr. Hardy spoke again to the little 
 widow. 
 
 " Is there no friend of the patient's 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 139 
 
 whom you could suggest as likely to 
 have influence on him ? Do you think 
 his lawyer would have weight ? We 
 know how he has secluded himself from 
 the world and his own class, and that 
 we are not to look among those who 
 would naturally be his friends for the 
 assistance we now want. Do you think 
 his lawyer would be likely to succeed 
 with him in this ? " 
 
 " I am greatly afraid not. I have 
 heard that — although he has a high 
 opinion of Mr. Shaw, his lawyer — he 
 would never in any way accept advice 
 in his affairs beyond legal matters. I 
 understand Sir Alexander has no per- 
 sonal liking for Mr. Shaw. And he 
 won't speak to any clergyman." 
 
 Again the three men looked at one 
 another in doubt and difficulty. Again 
 Dr. Hardy spoke : 
 
 " This is a matter of the utmost 
 
140 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 importance to those who come after Sir 
 Alexander, and we are most anxious it 
 should be settled, and at once. If we 
 thought it was a disinclination to make 
 a will, or a determination not to make 
 one, that kept him back, we should feel 
 no responsibility in the matter. But he 
 refuses to settle his worldly affairs solely 
 uj)on the ground that we are deceived as 
 to his condition of health. Now we are 
 confident w T e are rio-ht. He will never 
 rise from his bed again. Already dropsy 
 has made its appearance ; at any moment 
 that may, directly or indirectly, affect 
 the head ; in his case it is almost sure 
 to do so at some time." 
 
 Dr. Hardy paused a moment ; then 
 proceeded with more decision than here- 
 tofore : 
 
 " Perhaps you, Mrs. Grant, would be 
 kind enough to ask Miss Midharst if 
 she could give you the name of anyone 
 
"TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 141 
 
 on whose advice Sir Alexander would 
 be likely to rely in an important busi- 
 ness affair ? You need not distress Miss 
 Midharst with anything more exjDlicit." 
 
 Mrs. Grant rose with prompt willing- 
 ness, and hurried away in the sustaining-, 
 hope that Maud might be able to solve 
 the difficulty. 
 
 When Mrs. Grant had gone, the three 
 men drew near one of the tall narrow 
 windows that looked west along the 
 Island and commanded the beautiful 
 valley of the broad river, and the broad, 
 blue, bright Weeslade itself. 
 
 An everlasting Sabbath filled that 
 luxuriant valley with a peace which 
 seemed too fine for earth. Because of 
 the height on which the Castle stood, 
 and its distance from the nearest shore 
 beyond the western end of the Island, 
 all detail was subdued and lost ; nothing 
 was left to trouble the eye or excite 
 
142 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 enquiry. The eye could see nothing but 
 broad green pasturages and vast expanses 
 of emerald grainshoots reaching down 
 to the river's brink, and sloping softly 
 inward towards the quiet hills that stood 
 up apart, clad in purple and blue wood, 
 and crowned with violet uplands lying 
 secure against the azure sky. 
 
 The tide was full ; the winds were 
 still ; from the trees around through the 
 open window came the fragrant spices of 
 the may. Above, the lark took up 
 where all human voices end the praises 
 of the spring. The glory of inextinguish- 
 able youth was in his song, the wild 
 rapture of a regenerated soul. Below, 
 the sad -throated thrush piped of the 
 mellow melancholy of a ripe old world 
 that had borne a thousand generations 
 of men, who had moved all their days 
 through the same narrow and unsatisfying 
 avenues of desire and passion and fina 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 143 
 
 failure to the richly padded grave. The 
 thrush sang to the earth of those who 
 had died ; the lark sang to the skies of 
 those who shall live for ever. 
 
 Around the three men as they stood 
 by the open window was the mouldering 
 €hamber of an ancient house. On one 
 side lay the decayed old man of a noble 
 race. On the other side the maiden 
 daughter of that man, who had smothered 
 up his affectionate visitings under piles 
 of gold, scraped together for her, for the 
 pride of his lineage. 
 
 Beyond there in the city was ruin. 
 A great bank which had a branch in 
 Daneford had stopped payment to-day. 
 The three men by the window were 
 talking of that while they awaited the 
 return of the woman. 
 
 " Dreadful ! I am told that the poor 
 Mainwarings are completely ruined by 
 it. 
 
144 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 " Completely. Fancy old John Mus- 
 grave put four thousand pounds into it 
 on deposit this day week. It will kill 
 him. He had sold out Turks, and was 
 going to buy United States." 
 
 " Poor old fellow ! I do pity him." 
 
 " There was a rumour of one of the 
 local banks being in a bad way. Did 
 either of you hear it ? " 
 
 "Not the Daneford?" 
 
 " No ; Grey is safe. Bless me, his 
 father left him a couple of hundred 
 thousand clear of the business, and he's 
 been making money ever since." 
 
 "Is it the Weeslade Valley?" 
 
 " I don't like to say. It is so dan- 
 gerous to speak. But there is a rumour 
 of a local bank, and it's not Grey's." 
 
 " No. I should think Grey could 
 stand anything. They say it was always 
 Grey's system to keep the money near 
 home. It's a commercial and customers' 
 
U T0 THE ISLAND OR TO ." 145 
 
 bank, and not a gad-about among foreign 
 speculations and bubble manufacturers." 
 
 At that moment Mrs. Grant re-entered 
 the room. 
 
 The three men turned round and went 
 to her. 
 
 " I have seen Miss Midharst, and she 
 says she thinks the person most likely to 
 have influence with Sir Alexander is Mr. 
 Grey the banker." 
 
 " A most excellent man," said Dr. 
 Hardy, turning to the other two. " What 
 do you think V 
 
 " Capital!" 
 
 " No one could be better." 
 
 Dr. Hardy spoke to Mrs. Grant for 
 the last time on that occasion. " Send a 
 note by express to Mr. Grey, requesting 
 him to come immediately. Explain to 
 him what our views are, and ask him 
 to do his best to induce Sir Alexander 
 to make his will." 
 
 vol. i. 10 
 
146 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 In less than an hour and a half 
 Mr. Grey received Mrs. Grant's letter. It 
 merely said that his presence was urgently 
 desired at the Castle at once, and that 
 by hurrying he would greatly oblige 
 Sarah Grant. 
 
 He was in his private room at the 
 Bank when he read the letter. He 
 opened his private black bag. Bank 
 proprietors do not always carry firearms, 
 in fact rarely, almost never. Clerks in 
 charge of money often do. Grey always 
 carried a revolver — now. 
 
 " He can't have heard of his Consols? 
 In that case he would have written 
 himself or come. "What can this be ? — so 
 sudden, so urgent, and from Mrs. Grant ! 
 Perhaps the failure of the St. George's 
 has frightened him. If he asks me to 
 give up the money now ! Ah, I can't 
 face that ! No, no ! This first," and he 
 took a revolver out of his bag. 
 
" TO THE ISLAND OR TO ." 147 
 
 Again lie thought awhile, and ended 
 with a question : " Shall I go to the 
 Island or to ? " He poised the revolver. 
 
 As he did so there was a knock at 
 the door. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 
 
 " Come in," said the banker mechanically, 
 and his mother entered. 
 
 With a start Mr. Grey's mother cried 
 out " Henry ! " then crossed the room 
 hastily, and, putting her hand on his arm, 
 looked up into his face with alarm. 
 
 With an amused smile he glanced 
 down at her, and said simply, " Mother ? ' : 
 in a tone of badinage, as if paying her 
 off in her own coin by replying to her 
 with a single word. 
 
 "What was that you held in your 
 hand and dropped into the bag as I 
 came in ? " she asked with reproachful 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 149 
 
 •earnestness, looking up fixedly into his 
 eyes, as though she would pierce to his 
 innermost thoughts. 
 
 He put his hand on her shoulder 
 playfully, and smoothed one of the black 
 silk strings of her black bonnet with- 
 his thumb and finger, returning her 
 steady gaze with a steady eye and a 
 free smile. " That, mother," he answered, 
 " is the countersign for thieves." 
 
 " The countersign for thieves ! What 
 do you mean, Henry ; you ought not to 
 bandy words with your mother." 
 
 " Indeed, I am not playing with 
 words. I am only describing the weapon 
 and its use as briefly as })ossible. I was 
 looking at my revolver, for I was just 
 about to set out on a journey. You 
 see, if a thief comes up to a man 
 armed with a revolver, and demands 
 the man's purse, the man produces that 
 revolver, and the thief says, "Pass on, 
 
150 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 friend." If a thief who has stolen money 
 meets the man he stole it from, or a 
 policeman, and can pull out a revolver, 
 then he can say to the man or the 
 policeman, " Let me pass, or I will 
 shoot you down ; " or suppose the thief 
 finds the odds are against him, he can 
 put the barrel to his own temple, and 
 pass the foe in spite of numbers. Now, 
 mother, don't you think my explanation 
 is very clever and very exhaustive ? " 
 
 He placed his two hands on the- 
 widow's shoulders, and pushed her back 
 arm's length, dropped his head roguishly 
 over his shoulder, and laughed a soft 
 laugh, which seemed to invite her to 
 enjoy his cleverness and be amused at 
 the humour of the explanation. 
 
 Mrs. Grey did not smile. For a 
 moment her face grew puckered and 
 perplexed. In her eyes shone the light 
 of a mental conflict between anger and 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 151 
 
 tears. The conflict ended in a few- 
 moments. She threw herself into a chair 
 and covered her face with her hands. 
 She neither stormed nor wept. 
 
 He hastened to her with compunc- 
 tious solicitude. He knelt on one knee 
 by her side, and put his powerful arm 
 round her emaciated shoulders, and with 
 the hand of his other arm gently drew 
 down her hands from her face. 
 
 " Mother ! mother ! ' ; he pleaded, in 
 a tone of passionate tenderness. " I did 
 not mean to annoy or trouble you. I 
 was only a little wilfully following out 
 a fancy, a conceit. It was a foolish 
 vanity that made me seem to play 
 with your questions. You know, my own 
 mother, I would not give you any pain 
 I could help, for all the world. Forgive 
 me, and let us drop the nonsense. 
 Forgive me, and let us speak of some- 
 thing else." 
 
152 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 All the earnestness of this man's 
 nature went into these words, and there 
 was in them and the manner attending 
 them a fervid pathos which stirred the 
 heart of the woman so deeply it almost 
 killed her to keep from crying out, and 
 thro win or her arms round her son, and 
 weeping on his breast. But by a super- 
 human effort, an effort no created being 
 could make but a mother for the salva- 
 tion of a child, she held her passionate 
 love within her own heart ; for, according 
 to her theory, so must all women who 
 wish to rule their children ; and she 
 wanted to rule, not for the love of 
 power, but for the love of love and the 
 preservation of her son. 
 
 She gave one quick glance at him 
 out of those sharp eyes, and then throw- 
 ing down the eyes on the ground, said 
 in a constrained voice : 
 
 " The St. George's Banking Company 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 153 
 
 has failed. There is a run on the Daneford. 
 You are unable to meet that run, and you 
 were thinking of getting away from the 
 
 run and the closing of the doors with 
 
 that." She shuddered, raised her hand, and 
 pointed to the black bag into which he 
 had dropped the revolver. 
 
 " No ! no ! no ! mother ! " he cried 
 imploringly. " I pledge you my word — 
 if you like I will prove to you — that we 
 are able to meet any run that may come 
 upon us in consequence of this failure. 
 If you like I will call in Aldridge to 
 corroborate mv words." 
 
 "Corroborate your word, Henry!" she 
 cried scornfully. "Do you think I could 
 doubt my son's word, and believe the 
 word of any other man alive ! Never 
 while I Jive, I hope, shall you fall so 
 pitifully low as to need another man's 
 word to help your word to my belief." 
 She laid hold of the imputed question of 
 
154 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 her son's word as a point on which to rally 
 her disordered feelings and overcome the 
 tendency she felt to break down. 
 
 "Well, mother, rest assured this run 
 threatens us with no danger whatever. 
 On the contrary, as we are able to meet 
 it without the least inconvenience, the 
 position of the Bank ought to be very 
 materially improved when all becomes 
 quiet again." He rose and left her as 
 he spoke, and locked the two doors of 
 the room, observing : " We don't want 
 anyone to come in and interrupt us 
 now." 
 
 By the time he returned to his seat 
 she had recovered her composure. " Then 
 what do you mean by ' setting out on a 
 journey?' Those words helped me into 
 the fear." 
 
 As a reply to that question, he 
 pushed the note he had just received 
 from Mrs. Grant across the table to her. 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 155 
 
 and said : " Read that, and you will 
 understand." 
 
 She adjusted her tortoiseshell spectacles 
 and read the note deliberately. When 
 she had finished she looked up quickly. 
 
 He was standing at the window look- 
 ing out. His back was towards her, and 
 she could not see his face. It was 
 wrinkled and drawn up like a yellow 
 leaf. 
 
 "Do you know what you are wanted 
 for at the Castle V she asked briskly. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "What has happened to your voice 1 ?" 
 she asked, in a tone of anxiety and 
 surprise. He had spoken as though 
 his windpipe was almost closed in a 
 gripe. 
 
 " Nothing ; or at least something has 
 gone against my — breath. What am I 
 wanted for at the Castle ? " Still he 
 spoke as if half suffocated. Still he kept 
 
15G THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 his face to the window. Still his face 
 was wrinkled and yellow and withered 
 up. 
 
 " I met Dr. Hardy as I came in. He 
 had just driven straight back from the 
 Castle. There has been a consultation 
 of doctors to-day, and they have little or 
 no hope of Sir Alexander getting better. 
 He has not yet made his will, and they 
 all agreed you were the only person 
 likely to have any influence with him. 
 They could get him to do nothing about 
 it." 
 
 Grey's face cleared as if by magic. 
 He turned round suddenly, threw up 
 both his hands, and burst into a loud 
 and continuous shout of laughter. 
 
 His mother started to her feet, and 
 looked at him aghast. "Henry!" she 
 cried, in great alarm ; " Henry, what is 
 the matter ? " 
 
 " Nothing, mother, nothing," he said 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. Vol 
 
 between his laughter : "I thought it was 
 something serious." 
 
 She regarded him in a stupor of 
 amazement for a few seconds. " You 
 thought it was something serious," she 
 whispered, as if she questioned her 
 hearing. 
 
 " Yes, something very serious." 
 
 " But it is very serious. He is in 
 danger of death, and has not yet made 
 his will. Surely that, Henry, is no 
 subject for laughter." 
 
 He was composed now. His face was 
 radiant, and he smiled apologetically as 
 he said : " You must really forgive me, 
 dear mother. The fact is, for the past 
 quarter of an hour I have been on such 
 a stretch in the interview between us that 
 to hear of anything else but my own 
 affairs relieved me, and I could not help 
 laughing. I did not, indeed, laugh at the 
 thought of poor Sir Alexander being ill ; 
 
158 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 I pity him with all my heart. But what 
 you said touched some spring of my mind, 
 and I could no more have forborne to 
 laugh than to breathe for an hour. Well, 
 I think I had better start for the Island 
 at once. You now feel all right about 
 the Bank ? You feel quite comfortable 
 about it, mother, don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, but do not be so odd, Henry ; 
 you frighten me to death with your strange 
 ways of late." 
 
 " I have a good deal of anxiety, and 
 perhaps am too abrupt. More of my 
 abruptness : I can't wait another moment. 
 Good-bye, mother." 
 
 And in a few seconds he had ^one. 
 
 When she found herself alone, she sat 
 down to recover and to reflect. " Every 
 day," she thought, "he becomes less like 
 his old self, and more of a riddle." 
 
 Her eyes caught something on the table. 
 
 " When I came in he told me he was 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 159 
 
 examining that dreadful thing because he 
 was going on a journey, and now he's gone 
 off and left it behind him in the bag on 
 that table. Can it be he is losing his 
 reason ? " 
 
 When Mr. Grey found himself outside 
 the Bank-door he hailed the nearest fly, 
 jumped in, and cried cheerily to the 
 driver : 
 
 " Island Ferry, and I lay you a half- 
 crown to a whip-lash you don't do it under 
 half an hour. Take the time and drive 
 on." 
 
 With a chuckle of grave satisfaction, the 
 banker threw himself back in the fly, and 
 as they drove rapidly through the town 
 he waved his hand or doffed his hat at 
 every twenty yards. There was cordiality 
 in every look that greeted him, and many 
 who saw him go by turned and gazed 
 with admiration and envy after the fine 
 rich jovial banker. 
 
160 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 No wonder lie looked pleased. An 
 hour ago, less than an hour ago, he had, 
 upon reading that note, almost come to 
 the conclusion Sir Alexander Midharst 
 had discovered he, Grey, had " borrowed " 
 every penny of the immense sum confided 
 to his charge by the baronet. Such a 
 discovery would have been to him simply 
 and literally fatal. 
 
 Early in this year, when he disclosed 
 the secret of the Bank to his mother, 
 he and it were bankrupt, and all the 
 depositors' money was gone. Pressure 
 after pressure had come upon him after 
 that, and all such demands had been met 
 by " borrowing " the baronet's savings 
 without the baronet's consent. 
 
 Three months ago he was a bankrupt, 
 now he was a bankrupt and a thief. He 
 had no more right to sell those Consols 
 than to put his hand into any customers 
 pocket and take his purse. He had 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 161 
 
 glided into the thing gradually, beginning 
 by borrowing twenty thousand pounds, 
 which he caused to be lodged to his own 
 credit at his London agents in the name 
 of Barrington, Ware, and Duncan, an 
 imaginary firm of Boston merchants, who 
 remitted the money through their London 
 agent on account of supposititious dealings 
 in hides on the western coast of the 
 United States. 
 
 The twenty thousand had only stopped 
 the gap for a few days. Then heavier 
 and heavier bills came to maturity, and 
 before there was any general uneasiness 
 in the commercial world, one hundred 
 thousand pounds of the baronet's savings 
 had been " borrowed." 
 
 Then came ugly rumours of certain 
 banking establishments ; and although the 
 Daneford Bank was always spoken of 
 with the highest esteem in the district, 
 the city, and in such quarters of London 
 
 vol. I. 11 
 
162 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 as it was known, the accommodation 
 market had got very much straitened, 
 and the Daneford Bank's London agents 
 not only hinted they did not care to 
 make any additional advances, but sounded 
 Grey as to the possibility of their being 
 able to get a little advance from him. 
 Could he let them have fifty thousand 
 for six weeks on Argentines they did not 
 want to sell ? 
 
 Here was a chance of showing the 
 stability of his own concern and helping 
 a friendly firm which might be of incal- 
 culable use to him another time. Now 
 that he had dipped into the Midharst 
 fund, why not go deeper ? He could 
 make something out of this transaction ; 
 and it was for the good of Sir Alexander 
 as well as himself that he should try to 
 pull back all the money he could, and 
 keep the name of the Bank at the very 
 highest level. He lent the money. 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 163 
 
 Then came other pressures because of 
 those old speculations, a quarter of million 
 at least ; and last, more uneasy rumours 
 in the financial world, and the possibility 
 of a run on the Bank. At all risks the 
 Bank must stand ; for on its stability 
 depended not only the life of Henry 
 Walter Grey, but all chance of winning 
 back any portion of the baronet's money. 
 
 When the moment of this decision 
 arrived Grey put down his last stake ; 
 sold the last hundred thousand of Sir 
 Alexander's half a million Consols, and 
 bought the revolver. As he put the 
 matter to himself in his figurative way, 
 the situation now was a race between gold 
 and lead. Would the gold, in the form 
 of profits and deposits, come back to 
 him in such quantities as to prevent the 
 necessity for the outgoing of the lead ? 
 
 It was on Wednesday, the 30th of 
 May, 1866, he got that note from Mrs. 
 
164 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Grant. He had just been calculating his 
 chances of falling in for some of the business 
 of the St. George's Bank. He had even 
 put down a few figures to please and 
 natter his sight. It might be that if he 
 could hold on and get — say, half the 
 business of the Daneford branch of the 
 St. George's Bank, the chance of the gold 
 overtaking the lead would be enormously 
 increased. All this was of course con- 
 'tingent upon Sir Alexander remaining in 
 ignorance of the " borrowing." If that 
 came to his ears in any way, nothing 
 could prevent the lead overtaking the 
 gold. 
 
 That note almost precipitated the crisis. 
 In the usual way when he was wanted 
 at the Castle Sir Alexander wrote a line 
 himself, or called and asked the banker 
 down for the evening. This note did 
 not come from Sir Alexander, but from 
 Miss Midharst's companion. At the 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 1G5 
 
 moment when his mother entered a straw 
 might have turned his resolution in favour 
 of giving the lead a walk- over. But with 
 the news brought by his mother all was 
 changed, and the gold had taken a good 
 lead. 
 
 As he sat back in the fly and reviewed 
 his position he could hardly restrain his 
 exultation within the bounds of mere 
 facial joy. He would have liked to get 
 out and run through the streets, and 
 shout. 
 
 A few minutes ago he held all black 
 cards to a red trump. Now the whole 
 pack seemed to have been put before him 
 face up, with liberty to select his own 
 hand and turn a trump of his own 
 choosing. 
 
 No run could injure the Daneford 
 Bank; other banks might fail, but his 
 was secure for the time ; and by the aid 
 of its good substantial name the Daneford ' 
 
166 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 would get strong while others were crumb- 
 ling, and the future success of the Bank 
 would be assured beyond the reach of his 
 highest hope of years ago. 
 
 Only two possible chances were against 
 him, and if neither of these chances turned 
 up within twelve months he might laugh 
 at fate. 
 
 The former was that in the will there 
 should be introduced anything adverse to 
 him. The latter was that the old man 
 should die in less than twelve months,, 
 and leave it incumbent on the banker to 
 render an account and deliver up the 
 money before the end of twelve months. 
 
 Grey had fully made up his mind as 
 to the necessity for a will. Without a 
 will there would in all likelihood be Chan- 
 cery proceedings ; and while no one in 
 Daneford would dream of suspecting Grey, 
 or ask details of the account, much less 
 verification of the items, the Chancery 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 167 
 
 folk will go through the whole affair as 
 a matter of routine, and not as a matter 
 of precaution, or because of any sus- 
 picion. 
 
 Let there be a will, by all means. 
 
 It was fine to drive through the bright 
 sunlight of that glorious May weather, 
 and feel that the gold was overtaking 
 the lead. It was better than recovering 
 from a long illness ; it was coming back, 
 to life and green fields and the voices of 
 birds and the pressure of hands we love, 
 out of the dark, damp, noisome tomb. 
 
 When Mr. Grey arrived at Island Ferry 
 he alighted, told the driver of the fly 
 to wait for him, and took the boat to 
 the Island. 
 
 As soon as he arrived at the Castle 
 he was shown into the dreary deserted 
 banquet-room. 
 
 Here he found irrepressible little Mrs. 
 Grant waiting for him. After some time 
 
168 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 he gathered from her how matters stood, 
 and sent up his name to the sick man. 
 
 Sir Alexander would see Mr. Grey. 
 
 When the hanker reached the room 
 where the baronet lay, he was greatly 
 shocked at the change which had taken 
 place in the latter since the last time 
 they had met, although that was only 
 a few days ago. 
 
 There had always been a bright bloom, 
 the bloom of old age heightened and 
 deepened by the malady which afflicted 
 him chronically, on the old man's face. 
 Now the cheeks were puffed and purple, 
 and the eyes, once so keen and cold, 
 were dull and restless and impatient. 
 
 The long thin sinewy hands lay outside 
 the counterpane, and the voice of the 
 sufferer when he spoke was tremulous, 
 querulous, making a painful contrast to 
 the firm, clear, thin, biting speech of other 
 days. 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 169 
 
 After the usual greetings and Grey's 
 expression of sorrow for his indisposition, 
 the old man spoke quickly, and in an 
 unsteady voice. 
 
 " These doctors have been worrying me 
 to-day, Grey, and I am very glad you 
 have come. I want to talk to you. Pull 
 that curtain a little across the window ; 
 I hate the sunlight. Thank you, Grey. 
 Sit down now, where I can see you. 
 It's a comfort to look at a man like 
 you after those false prophets and hoarse 
 ravens. The doctors have been with me, 
 Grey ; and they tell me I should make 
 my will. Now I'm not talking to you 
 as a medical man, but as a man of business. 
 What do you say ?" 
 
 " Have you spoken to Mr. Shaw about 
 the matter % " asked the banker softly. 
 
 " No ; I have not spoken to Shaw 
 about it. I hate lawyers," cried the old 
 man pettishly. 
 
170 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 "If I hated lawyers," returned Grey, 
 with a shy smile, " I should not be with- 
 out a will for four-and-twenty hours." 
 
 "Why?" demanded the old man, with 
 a contraction of the brows and a glance 
 of suspicion directed at an imaginary 
 group of lawyers. 
 
 " You know, Sir Alexander, lawyers 
 have a special prayer, asking for the 
 management of intestate estates." He 
 raised his eyebrows and smiled archly 
 at the prostrate man. 
 
 " I don't understand you, Grey. These 
 doctors, with their fears and their jargon, 
 have confused me. What do you mean ?" 
 
 For a moment the banker looked at 
 the baronet uneasily. Could it be that 
 already his mind was becoming clouded 
 or torpid ? After a moment's observation 
 and thought, Grev decided that the old 
 man was only dazed and tired. 
 
 " What I mean, Sir Alexander, is, that 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 171 
 
 in cases where there is no will, the law- 
 costs often consume the whole estate, and 
 alivays eat up enormously more money 
 than where there is a sound will." 
 
 The old man reflected awhile. 
 
 "Have you made your own will?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Certainly. I could not rest if I 
 thought what little fortune I may have 
 should, instead of going to my wife, be 
 scattered about in this and that court, in 
 this and that litigation. As I go home 
 the ferry-boat may overturn and I may 
 be drowned, the horse may run away 
 and I may be killed. Making a will has 
 with me no connection with good or bad 
 health. It is a business thing which 
 ought, on the principle of economy, to be 
 done in time. In nothing more than in 
 making a will is it true that a stitch in 
 time saves nine ? " 
 
 There was a long pause. 
 
172 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 " Grey !" 
 
 "Yes, Sir Alexander." 
 
 " You helped me to put this fortune 
 together for my daughter." 
 
 A bow of deprecation. 
 
 " You have been ten years now taking 
 care of it for her." 
 
 "Yes, Sir Alexander." What was 
 coming now ? Could all this be a ruse f 
 Was this serene interview to end in a 
 storm of intolerable ruin ? Had this 
 old man been leading up with deceiving 
 equanimity to some prodigious burst, some 
 unendurable tempest of reproach ? 
 
 "Will you go still farther?" 
 
 "In what way ?" 
 
 " Will you act as one of the executors, 
 the chief — no, as the sole, as sole trustee 
 and guardian?" 
 
 " What ! Sir Alexander, Sir Alexander, 
 are you — are you trifling with me ? If 
 you are, give it up. I cannot, I will not, 
 
TRUSTEE TO CANCELLED PAGES. 173 
 
 be trifled with." His face shrivelled up, 
 and he covered it in his hands. For that 
 brief space he thought all had been 
 discovered. 
 
 " What I say I mean. Why should 
 I trifle with you ? If I am to die or be 
 killed, let me die with the knowledge 
 that the fortune of my child will be as 
 safe when I am dead as it is now. Will 
 you do this, Grey, for me?" 
 
 "I will." 
 
 "Then you may tell Shaw to come. 
 Go to him at once. I wish to make my 
 will." 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 
 
 Mr. Grey's drive to Castle Ferry had 
 been an excursion to meet victory ; his 
 return to Daneford was a triumphant 
 progress. 
 
 Now it seemed to him nothing short 
 of a conspiracy between fate and accident 
 could wreck him. The two chances which 
 had threatened him with ruin had melted 
 into thin air. Nothing adverse to him 
 would be in the will, and not only that, 
 but from the day of Sir Alexander's death 
 until the coming of age of Miss Midharst 
 he would have absolute control of affairs, 
 and every chance of making good the 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 175 
 
 sum he had abstracted. The gold was 
 ^oiris; to beat the lead at a walk. 
 
 The financial world was now in a 
 state of deplorable despondency, but that 
 condition of things could not last for ever. 
 There was of course no prospect of his 
 making a tenth part of the half a million 
 profit during the twelve months ; but the 
 St. George's Bank was gone, and deposits 
 would come flowing in, and having obliged 
 his London agents in their need, they 
 could not refuse him anything in reason 
 by-and-by. After riding out the bad 
 times his credit would be so firmly 
 established that he could get money on 
 the best terms to build up the horrible 
 gap he had made. He could borrow to 
 replace what he had stolen. 
 
 "I shall win now, and I shall win 
 easily," he thought, as he drove through 
 the bright fresh air towards Daneford ; 
 " and by the time there is another 
 
176 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 dissolution, who can tell but I may take 
 one of the seats for the city, if it is offered 
 to me." 
 
 He went straight to Mr. Shaw, and 
 told that gentleman how Sir Alexander 
 Midharst desired to see him with a view 
 to making his will, and how the client, 
 although in no immediate danger of 
 death, was nevertheless in a state of 
 health which made it highly desirable 
 his worldly affairs should be put in order 
 as quickly as possible. 
 
 Mr. Shaw visited the Castle that 
 evening, wrote from the baronet's dictation, 
 and on Monday, the 4th of June, 1866, 
 the will was signed by Sir Alexander in 
 the presence of two competent witnesses, 
 who, in the presence of the testator and 
 of one another, affixed their signatures. 
 
 A few days afterwards Mr. Gray met 
 
 the lawyer. 
 
 " Well," said the banker, with one of 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. Ill 
 
 his easiest smiles, " did you do what was 
 required at the Castle ? ,: 
 
 "Yes," answered the white-haired soli- 
 citor, who was tremulous, and had a 
 disconcerting way of shutting his eyes and 
 consulting imaginary internal Acts of Par- 
 liament when he spoke. He was not by 
 nature communicative, and he held in rigid 
 regard all professional etiquette ; but Mr. 
 Henry Walter Grey was a very exceptional 
 man, and, moreover, the testator had told 
 him Mr. Grey had consented to act as 
 guardian and trustee ; therefore he did 
 not feel he committed any impropriety in 
 adding : " Sir Alexander appears to share 
 public feeling in your favour, and to place 
 unlimited confidence in our most careful 
 banker." 
 
 "You are very kind," returned Mr. 
 Grey, with his most cordial smile. "As 
 you know, our establishment has been a 
 long time connected with the Castle, and 
 
 vol. I. 12 
 
178 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 when Sir Alexander asked me to act, it 
 would look ungracious in me to refuse. " 
 " It's a heavy responsibility." 
 "Oh, as far as the responsibility 
 goes " He did not finish the sen- 
 tence in words, but with a shrug of his 
 shoulders, as much as to say : " We 
 bankers are accustomed to grave re- 
 sponsibilities." Then the two parted. 
 
 From this conversation Grey not only 
 gathered that the will had been made, but 
 also that under it he had been appointed 
 executor and trustee to the document and 
 the estate, and guardian to the heiress. 
 
 AVhat more could he require to put his 
 mind at rest ? 
 
 And yet as the days went on he was 
 far from easy. Many things caused him 
 trouble and made him anxious. The gloom 
 over the financial world deepened instead 
 of lifting. The ordinary depositors grew 
 shyer and shyer, as crash followed crash, 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 179 
 
 and house followed house, in the awful 
 ruin of the time. 
 
 No one breathed a word against the 
 Daneford Bank ; all who spoke of it 
 acknowledged its position unassailable ; 
 still its business showed no vast increase, 
 no such increase as would help Grey out 
 of the whirlpool into which he had been 
 drawn, although the Bank's borrowing 
 power had been secured. 
 
 From bad, things went to worse. As 
 the year wore on, some of his best cus- 
 tomers began to feel the pressure of the 
 times. Instead of finding funds flowing 
 into the Bank in unexampled abundance, 
 money ran out. 
 
 Old respectable firms now came to him 
 and asked to be helped over the disastrous 
 period. They brought this security and 
 that, and begged for advances. If the 
 name and fame of the Bank were to be 
 magnified, this .was the time to do it. 
 
180 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 He had still funds enough to make the 
 Bank proof .against contingency ; over and 
 above this he had a little margin, not 
 much, but most useful. 
 
 About the middle of June the Weeslade 
 Steamship Company quarrelled with their 
 bankers, the Weeslade Valley Bank. The 
 Steamship Company wanted an advance of 
 five thousand pounds on the river steam- 
 boat Rodwell, which carried passengers 
 between Daneford and SeaclifT. The Wees- 
 lade Valley Bank refused. The Steamship 
 Company withdrew their account from the 
 Valley Bank, and offered their business to 
 the Daneford Bank. The account was 
 opened in the Daneford, and the advance 
 was made by mortgage on the Rod well, 
 the Steamship Company paying interest 
 on the advance, and depositing with the 
 mortgage a policy of insurance against 
 total loss by water or weather. 
 
 Towards the end of June the Daneford 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 181 
 
 Bank's London agent failed, by which the 
 Bank lost a clear twenty thousand pounds, 
 besides losses by delay in getting a divi- 
 dend. This was very serious. It caused 
 a run on the Daneford Bank. In three 
 days thirty thousand pounds were with- 
 drawn in excess of average draughts. 
 
 On the morning of the third day the 
 Daneford Bank issued a circular which 
 took the town by storm. The circular 
 was brief, and ran as follows : 
 
 "Thursday, 28th June, 1866. 
 
 "The Daneford Bank. 
 " Take notice, owing to the fact that 
 a run has begun on the Daneford Bank, 
 the offices of that Bank will be opened 
 every morning at eight instead of nine, 
 and will be closed at seven instead of four 
 p.m., until this run has ceased. 
 
 "Henry Walter Grey." 
 
 This circular was town talk the next 
 
182 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 day. The admirers of Wat were more 
 enthusiastic than ever in their praises of 
 his boldness and wisdom. This circular 
 killed the panic, and on Saturday of 
 the same week the drawings had shrunk 
 back to an average. Yet for another 
 week the Bank was kept open from 
 eight in the morning till seven in the 
 
 evening. 
 
 On Monday, the 9th of July, a second 
 circular was issued from the Bank, saying 
 that as the run had ceased for a week the 
 office hours for the future would be as of 
 old, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 
 
 But, although the run had ceased, up- 
 wards of thirty thousand pounds had been 
 withdrawn, and only five thousand found 
 its way back again, and that was decidedly 
 bad. The Bank was not in the least 
 jeopardy. Sir Alexander Midharst's half 
 a million had saved it ; but the baronet's 
 money was not only not returning, but 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 183 
 
 the balance of it in hand began to run 
 low. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this business pres- 
 sure and the perilous position in which 
 Grey stood, no one could detect in his 
 face or manner a clue to the anxiety 
 which consumed him. Still he was the 
 same joyous companion, the same jovial 
 host, the same considerate employer, the 
 same liberal patron. 
 
 To his mother he displayed the best 
 view of his position. He showed her how 
 the steamship business had fallen in to 
 him because he was in funds and could 
 give accommodation beyond the power of 
 his local rival. He admitted the loss in 
 London, but pointed out how the loss and 
 the run, taken together, must end in great 
 advantage to his Bank. 
 
 She heard not only his story, but, from 
 all who spoke to her on the subject, con- 
 gratulations upon the Bank's position and 
 
184 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 his great prudence and good sense. He 
 told her the money from Boston had not 
 only saved him, but had so improved his 
 resources that the Bank was now in fully 
 as good a position as at any time during 
 his father's lifetime. 
 
 Hard as the business affairs of Mr. 
 Grey pressed upon him, and difficult as 
 he felt the burden, they were not all the 
 troubles he had to endure. 
 
 In order to 23revent bankruptcy he 
 had committed fraud. Up to this time 
 he had carried on that fraud without 
 exciting a hint of suspicion. The man 
 whose money he had appropriated to his 
 own use not only felt no misgivings as 
 to the safety of his vast hoard, but had 
 recently lavished upon him, Grey, the last 
 proofs of implicit confidence when placing 
 practically all that fortune and the care 
 of the heiress in his hands. 
 
 But, as well as the pressure - of his 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 185 
 
 business and the weight of his crime, he 
 had other difficulties to endure. He still 
 entertained his friends with his usual 
 hospitality and good grace, but the con- 
 dition of the inner circle of his domestic 
 life grew daily harder and harder to bear. 
 
 The eccentricity of Mrs. Grey developed 
 with time, and, still more unfortunately, 
 the terrible infirmity to which she had 
 given way increased upon her with, the 
 years. 
 
 She was childless ; she was alone all 
 day in that great strange house ; few 
 people called upon her, and she rarely 
 went out. Her husband was always kind 
 in manner towards her, and she could 
 ask for nothing he would not get her. 
 But she knew he and she were not one, 
 that they never had been one, that they 
 never could be one. 
 
 Mr. Grey did not lunch at home, so 
 that Mrs. Grey usually had luncheon by 
 
186 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 herself, except upon the rare occasions 
 when one of her few acquaintances called 
 and stayed. 
 
 Seldom Mr. Grey dined out ; often 
 he had someone to dine with him, and 
 often he gave parties. All this caused 
 Mrs. Grey to be much by herself, and 
 solitude was, for one of her disposition 
 and tendency, fatal. 
 
 By little and little the disastrous 
 habit grew. It was most carefully con- 
 cealed from the servants. At first Grey 
 had tried to effect a cure ; then, despair- 
 ing of that, he strove with all his skill 
 to avoid a scandal. 
 
 With that view he had a little cupboard 
 fitted up in the only room furnished in the 
 Tower. For this cupboard he got two 
 keys — one for himself, and one for his 
 wife. In giving her the key he had said 
 quietly : 
 
 " In future you will find the wine for 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 187 
 
 ordinary purposes in the new cupboard ; 
 so that you may not have the trouble of 
 sending to the cellar for it, or in case 
 I am out and you want more than is 
 decanted, you can get it there. You 
 will always have some there without 
 sending; to the cellar for it." 
 
 " But we don't want any more than 
 is decanted — so few people call," said the 
 wife tremulously. 
 
 " I know, I know. But someone may 
 call, and as I keep the key of the cellar 
 you might find yourself in a difficult 
 position. Take this key of the cupboard, 
 and here is the key of the room itself; 
 there is only one other key, and I have 
 that. The room is the quietest in the 
 whole house. The door lochs on either the 
 in or the outside. The room is comfortably 
 done up, and you can make any use you 
 please of it. If you feel worried, or not 
 very well, and wish to get away from the 
 
188 THE WEIRD SISTEES. 
 
 annoyance of the servants, you can go 
 and lie down a while there.'' 
 
 These precautions were deplorable and 
 degrading. All the love he had once 
 borne this woman had died ; and although 
 he carefully concealed his feelings towards 
 her, he had at last come to regard her 
 with loathing. 
 
 She was in no way responsible for the 
 disasters which had fallen on his business ; 
 she furnished no excuse for the crime he 
 had committed, but she was one of the 
 elements in his misfortune ; and now that 
 she had fallen into an odious fault, he 
 resolved to put no impediment in her 
 downward career, so long as her descent 
 did not become apparent or public. 
 
 It was a sad development of the 
 romantic and chivalric story of Wat 
 Grey's wooing. But then, so long as 
 Daneford knew nothing of the decay of 
 that romance or the decline of that 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 189 
 
 chivalry, the fact that both were going — 
 gone, was of little moment to Wat Grey. 
 
 His embezzlement of the money had 
 taught him that damaging facts had no 
 injurious influence with the public — so 
 so long as the facts were carefully con- ■ 
 cealed. He found crime an easier burden 
 than he had expected, and in place of 
 his old dread of crime itself he had now 
 a dread of disclosure only. If he had 
 grown to hate his wife, what then — so 
 long as no one knew of it. 
 
 Up to this point Fate seemed to have 
 played deliberately into his hands. He 
 had ruined himself in Southern expecta- 
 tions, Fate had put more than half a 
 million of money into his power, and he 
 had extricated his fortune. An unlucky 
 turn of the die might have betrayed him, 
 and given him up to worse destruction 
 than the former, but all came round as 
 though he had the ordering of events. 
 
190 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Not only was there to be no immediate 
 call for that money, no immediate investi- 
 gation into accounts with, a checking of 
 documents and an examination of affairs, 
 but he was appointed supreme custodian 
 of the whole property, and, for upwards 
 of a year from the old man's death, no 
 enquiry disadvantageous to him could be 
 set on foot. 
 
 Suppose the old man were to die soon, 
 and business were to keep on the disas- 
 trous lines it had adopted of late ? What 
 then? 
 
 What then ? 
 
 Many and many a day he put that 
 question to himself in the morning before 
 he broke his fast ; and again at night 
 before he went to bed he repeated this 
 terrible question — unanswered. 
 
 And the more he pondered over this 
 question the less he liked to look at the 
 answer. Not that the simple and direct 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT. 191 
 
 answer appalled him, for that had been 
 familiar to his mind for some time ; the 
 simple answer was, Ruin — Self-imposed 
 Death. 
 
 That was the positive answer to the 
 question ; but that did not affright him 
 now, though it had terrified him at first. 
 
 He was still what might be called a 
 young man, for he carried his five-and- 
 forty years more easily than many 
 another man carried thirty. He was 
 not a whit insensible to the many phy- 
 sical and social personal advantages he 
 possessed. He knew he was a favourite 
 wherever he went. He knew he was 
 good-looking. He knew he was clever. 
 
 He knew he was married. 
 
 His wife had brought him nothing 
 worth speaking of — not position, happi- 
 ness. He had been everything to her, 
 and how poorly had she requited him ! 
 It was only by the utmost care he 
 
192 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 avoided a damning scandal alighting upon 
 his name through her. 
 
 Fortune had favoured him up to this. 
 Would Fortune be his friend still further ? 
 Was it too much to hope that another 
 great piece of good luck might await 
 him ? 
 
 There was one sure way out of all 
 his danger and difficulties, if he had only 
 been a single man : there was Maud. 
 
 If, when Sir Alexander died, he were 
 a bachelor, he might marry Maud. She 
 knew nothing of the world, and he knew 
 she liked him. There would be no need 
 for his ruin if he were only a bachelor. 
 
 It was beyond the power of Fate to 
 make him a bachelor ; but suppose Fate 
 should take away that unloved wife, that 
 great danger to his name, that great 
 stumbling-block in the way of his suc- 
 cessful progress ? 
 
 Then? What then? Answer: He 
 
WAT GREY'S ROMANCE DIES OUT 193 
 
 should many Maud, and so wipe out 
 the history of his crime. 
 
 Would chance or accident, would 
 Heaven or Hell, or whatever else he 
 might call it, take away from him this 
 woman who was a curse and burden, 
 and give him that woman who would 
 bring him deliverance ? 
 
 Such thoughts had long haunted his 
 mind before he had heard on that 
 17th of August the voices which assailed 
 and tempted him in tremendous tones ; 
 that day on which the fate of the steam- 
 boat Rodwell and of Beatrice his wife, of 
 the Weird Sisters and the Towers of 
 Silence, became sealed together for ever. 
 
 vol. i. 13 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A FLASK OF COGXAC. 
 
 "When the Weeslade Valley Bank declined 
 to advance five thousand pounds on the 
 Weeslade Steamship Company's river pas- 
 senger-boat the Rodwell, they had two 
 reasons for the refusal : first, they were 
 not prepared to lock up money at the 
 time ; second, a report reached them that 
 the Rodwell was in bad condition. 
 
 In the winter of the year 1865 the 
 Rodwell had lain up, undergoing repairs, 
 and then the discovery was made that 
 her condition was far from satisfactory. 
 Many of her plates were no thicker than 
 brown -paper, and just at the bends aft 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 195 
 
 the point of a scraper had absolutely 
 gone through a plate. 
 
 The boilers, too, were found to be 
 in an unsatisfactory condition, and the 
 machinery needed thorough overhauling. 
 
 But they wanted the boat for the 
 summer traffic, and had no time to get 
 all she required done before the fine 
 weather ; so she was patched for the time, 
 the intention being to lay her up the 
 following autumn and put her in good 
 repair ; in the meantime one new boiler 
 was to -be made for her. 
 
 Towards the middle of AjDril she began 
 running as usual with passengers between 
 Daneford and Seacliff. 
 
 On her third trip she broke down ; 
 something went wrong with her machinery, 
 and she had to be towed into Seacliff by 
 another steamer. 
 
 As this accident occurred early in the 
 season there were few passengers, and 
 
196 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 little excitement arose from the circum- 
 stance. 
 
 Almost the whole trade of the Rodwell 
 consisted of carrying seaside folk from 
 Daneford to Seacliff and back again. She 
 sailed every week-day of the season from 
 Seacliff to Daneford at half-past seven in 
 the morning, and from Daneford to Sea- 
 cliff at half-past six in the afternoon. 
 Many of the business men of the city 
 kept their families all the season at 
 Seacliff, they themselves coming and going 
 between the little town and the city 
 daily, and enjoying the advantages of 
 sleeping in sea - freshened air and two 
 bright pleasant sails of a couple of hours 
 each in the day. 
 
 When, in overhauling the Rodwell in 
 1865, they found the boilers in not a 
 satisfactory condition, they took off five 
 pounds of steam. " Better to be sure 
 than sorry," they said. This reduction of 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 197 
 
 steam made the Rodwell slower in 1866 
 than in previous years. 
 
 On Tuesday, the 14th of August, 1866, 
 the engineer of the Rodivell made a 
 report to the owners, and was directed 
 to work her at another five pounds' 
 reduction of pressure. 
 
 When Grey advanced the five thousand 
 pounds on the mortgage he made no enquiry 
 into her condition. He knew the boat very 
 well, had many times travelled by her 
 between Daneford and Seacliff. He knew 
 she was worth more than the money asked 
 for, and as no mortgage existed upon her 
 he felt he should be quite secure if the 
 company ensured her, and handed him a 
 policy for five thousand pounds. His 
 position was that if the company did 
 not pay the interest on his money and 
 his money itself, ultimately he could seize 
 the Rodwell ; and if the steamboat were 
 lost by any chance of wind or water he 
 
198 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 should get his money from the insurance 
 company. 
 
 Mr. Grey was as familiar with the 
 steamboat Rodwell as any man in Dane- 
 ford. He had often spent the summer 
 months with his wife at Seacliff, and had 
 been a passenger in the boat hundreds 
 of times. He knew all the men employed 
 on her ; he knew every exterior brass 
 plate and hinge and bolt. He could go 
 about her blindfold, and steer her up or 
 down the river. He didn't understand 
 machinery, but often said he could com- 
 mand, steer, and attend to the engines 
 all by himself, and save the wages of the 
 crew. 
 
 Daneford was proud of all its institu- 
 tions, and after Wat there were few it 
 felt more complaisant about than the 
 j)retty town and picturesque scenery of 
 Seacliff and the faithful Bod well, the town 
 being regarded as the country sweetheart, 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 190 
 
 the milkmaid lover of the city, and the 
 steamboat as the Mercury of the love- 
 making. 
 
 It was Grey's intention to spend the 
 month of September, 1866, at Seacliff. 
 He did not own a house there. It had 
 been his custom to rent a small white 
 cottage that hung half-way down a red 
 cliff surrounding one of the blue bays 
 clustering around the high headland on 
 which the white town was built. 
 
 He did not regard his sojourn at 
 Seacliff with any lively anticipations. It 
 was pleasant to steam up and down the 
 blue river between the sunlit green shores, 
 through the sweet odours from the woods 
 and hedges freshened and spiritualised by 
 the full broad river. The morning swim 
 in the strong sea-water brought the sense 
 of health and vigour and power into his 
 frame. The breakfast, ample, well cooked, 
 appetising, with blithe company, full of 
 
200 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 inspiriting talk and resolute happiness, in 
 the steamer's cabin, would cure a mis- 
 anthrope and buoy the heart of a cynic. 
 The joyous solemnity of that cigar on 
 deck afterwards would reconcile an 
 anchorite to comfort. Yet for all these 
 advantages Henry Walter Grey did not 
 like his season at SeaclifT. 
 
 The evening voyage was no less to be 
 enjoyed. After the dust and worry of 
 the city's day it was good to feel the 
 moist winds blowing through your hair, 
 against your forehead ; to hear the cooling 
 swirl of the water at the bow, and the 
 far-off wash of the steamer's swells upon 
 the shadowy shore ; to watch the crimson 
 sunset, and the coming of the pale -blue 
 stars, and the red moon that, slowly 
 rising from the hot earth to the limpid 
 sky, grew mild and fair, while under it 
 the white earth sailed silent down the 
 ocean of the dark ; to feel the hallowed 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 201 
 
 peace of night ascending from earth to 
 God. 
 
 But it ruined all to know in that 
 cottage above the bay on the ledge of red 
 cliff one waited who was no companion, 
 yet bound to him for life ; to know year 
 by year the chasm between them widened ; 
 and that above that chasm hung a spirit 
 of evil, the bad angel of a terrible weak- 
 ness, which might at any moment become 
 visible to all those standing by, and ruin 
 her, and bring on him pity — pity, that 
 boneless scorn more unendurable than 
 contempt or loathing. 
 
 In the deep seclusion of the Manor, 
 Grey felt the skeleton in his house was 
 pretty safely hidden ; here in Seacliff there 
 were innumerable chances of discovery. 
 It is more than likely he would not have 
 gone to Seacliff in the summer if by any 
 possibility he could safely avoid it. But 
 all the well-off people of Daneford went 
 
202 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 every year to the little town, and to 
 depart from the custom would be to attract 
 a dangerous attention to himself and his 
 household. It had been his custom of 
 former years to stay at Seacliff for three 
 months of summer; but in the year 1866 
 he resolved to limit his stay to one month 
 — the month of September. 
 
 When he and she were at home in 
 the Manor House, she was more directly 
 under his control, immediately under his 
 observation. But on leaving Seacliff in 
 the morning he was always weighed down 
 by the dread that in this little town of 
 much gossip something might leak out 
 while he was away. She might go into 
 the town, and in some incautious way 
 betray her fault, and destroy all the 
 respect people felt for her — all the respect 
 they felt for his wife. 
 
 What an awful millstone to carry about 
 with one ! Fancy the men at the street- 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 203 
 
 corners chatting together, or groups standing 
 at the Chamber of Commerce windows, or 
 the members of the Club, or his own staff 
 at the Bank, looking after him with com- 
 passionate eyes, and saying : " Poor Wat ! 
 How sad and worn and broken-down he 
 looks ! What a wretched thing ! What 
 a dreadful thing when a man's wife is 
 a — drunkard ! " 
 
 The last word was always haunting 
 his ears, always booming in the hollow 
 caverns through which his fears followed 
 him during sleep ; and although the habit 
 of Mrs. Grey had not yet become so con- 
 firmed as to justify the application of 
 such an odious epithet, her case was 
 growing no better, growing rather worse 
 with time. 
 
 All the Midharst money was gone. 
 Her fault was at most a vice ; but he 
 had committed a crime. He lay between 
 two fears ; he was threatened by two 
 
204 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 discoveries. Someone mis^lit find out 
 about her, and blast the fame of the 
 Manor House ; someone might find out 
 about him, and blast the Daneford Bank, 
 and lock him up in jail, and brand the 
 name he bore with ignominy. 
 
 In such a state of mind was Grey 
 when the 16th of August arrived and 
 evening brought him home. The husband 
 and wife sat down alone to dinner, sat 
 down alone to the last dinner they were 
 ever to eat together. 
 
 " Bee," said Grey to his wife, when 
 the dessert had been brought in and the 
 servants had gone, " do you think you 
 could go down to Seacliff in the Rodwell 
 to-morrow evening, and look up the cot- 
 tage ? I saw the estimable and penurious 
 landlord of it to-day. It's not occupied 
 this month, and he wanted me to take 
 it from the 20th. I'm half inclined to 
 accept his offer. He says we can have 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 205 
 
 it from the 20th of this month to the 
 end of September for a month's rent. 
 It would be almost worth while to take 
 him at his word, and hear how he'd 
 whine if I gave him a cheque for the 
 month's rent only. What are those two 
 famous items out of last year's bill ?" 
 
 "Brunswick varnish, for the kitchen 
 coal-scuttle, 2d. ; and a pair of brass stair- 
 eyes, one lost and one damaged, 2d." 
 quoted Mrs. Grey seriously, as if the 
 imposition was intolerable. 
 
 "Yes, yes. That's it. Brunswick 
 varnish and stair - eyes," laughed Grey. 
 " And at the end of all the items for 
 damage was the general observation : 
 ' The same being in excess of reasonable 
 wear and tear.' Didn't he make us 
 whiten all the ceilings, too, on the 
 grounds that we stopped far into the 
 season and blackened them with the 
 lamps ?" 
 
206 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 "Yes, Wat." 
 
 " Is it three or four times we have 
 paid, Bee, for cracking that soup-tureen ? 
 The old crack, you know." 
 
 " We've paid, I think, Wat, only 
 twice for that crack, but he has charged 
 us with the ladle every year, although 
 we never had one." 
 
 "Why, this old Parkinson is much 
 more amusing than a state-jester of old, 
 and not half so impudent or expensive." 
 Mr. Grey smiled, and rubbed his smooth 
 cheek with his white hand. After a 
 moment's enjoyment of his recollections 
 of Parkinson, he returned to the question. 
 " Well, Bee, will you go down in the 
 Roclivell with me to-morrow evening? 
 We can have a breath of sea-air, a look 
 at Parkinson and the cottage, and come 
 back by the boat in the morning." 
 
 "Very well, Wat. Of course I'll go 
 with you." 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 207 
 
 " Now let me see. The best plan will 
 be for you to go from this to the boat. 
 Be on board at a quarter-past six, and stay 
 there until I come. You won't forget ? " 
 
 "No, Wat." 
 
 "You're quite sure you won't forget?" 
 Of late Mrs. Grey's memory had shown 
 signs of giving way. 
 
 cc I'll be there, certainly," she answered, 
 a little hotly. " You don't think my 
 memory is so bad I am likely to forget 
 anything that gives me a chance of getting 
 out of this dull house." 
 
 " Because," he said, holding up his 
 finger to quiet her displeasure, " I may 
 not be able to get away from the office 
 until just half-past six. I shall be at the 
 boat in time. You will go aboard and 
 sit down aft, and wait for me." 
 
 Having thus arranged for the following 
 evening, Grey lapsed into silence, and his 
 wife withdrew. 
 
208 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Those after-dinner hours, which, to the 
 prosperous man are the most placid and 
 full of content, were now to Grey full of 
 fears and subtle agonies when he had no 
 company. The necessity all through the 
 day for showing a fair front to the world 
 and keeping up his reputation for cordial 
 joviality no longer existed when he found 
 himself alone in his own dining-room. 
 
 Then he exposed his imagination to 
 all the dangers and difficulties in his path. 
 Here, this 16th of August, was he safe 
 over all the wreck of that awful month 
 of May, but at what a cost ? The com- 
 mission of a disgraceful crime and the 
 perpetual dread of a damning discovery. 
 
 The financial crisis had shattered trade, 
 dispersed confidence, and ruined enter- 
 prise. The last penny of the baronet's 
 money had been taken, and was gone ; 
 and yet no remarkable prosperity, nothing 
 in the meanest way approaching what he 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 209 
 
 had calculated upon, had set in towards 
 him. Even in the recent days of over- 
 trading, when money was dear, the deposits 
 in the Daneford Bank had been more than 
 during the past few months. Things were 
 not likely to mend in time for him. At 
 the present rate twenty years could not 
 bring in half the sum he wanted, and he 
 might be called to disgorge within eighteen 
 months, within a much less time should 
 the old baronet suddenly die and matters 
 take a turn unfavourable to his interest 
 with regard to the guardianship of the 
 heiress — his care over her not reaching, 
 he supposed, beyond her twenty-first 
 birthday. Merciful Heavens ! what could 
 deliver him ? 
 
 And then followed the invariable 
 reply: There is nothing to save you 
 from infamy but marriage with Maud 
 Midharst. 
 
 Then the memory of his wife's faults 
 vol. i. 14 
 
210 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 came up before him like an indictment 
 seeking her life. She was flighty, unwise, 
 dull, uncompanionable — intemperate. 
 
 She was no pleasure to him. She 
 seemed to be the source of no pleasure 
 to herself. If the Powers of good would 
 only take her, what a blessed relief to 
 him ! 
 
 If the Powers of any denomination 
 -whatever would only take her and leave 
 him free ! 
 
 He rose, and strode up and down 
 the long room, his face puckered and 
 pinched, his hands clutched, his eyebrows 
 dragged down over his eyes until the 
 -eyes disappeared, those eyes wont to be 
 so free and open. 
 
 If the Powers of any denomination 
 
 whatever His thoughts paused a 
 
 while, his brows relaxed, his whole face 
 changed character, put on holiday attire. 
 With a light foot and a pleasant smile 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 211 
 
 he approached the chimney-piece and 
 pulled the bell. 
 
 " James," he said, when the man 
 entered, " bring me a flask of cognac." 
 
 While the servant was going to the 
 cellar he said to himself, with a gentle 
 smile, " I have been very thoughtless 
 about that press in the Tower of Silence. 
 I have left claret and port and sherry 
 there, but until now I never remembered 
 brandy ! How careless I have been." 
 
 In a few minutes James returned with 
 the bottle, drew the cork, decanted the 
 brandy, and left. 
 
 Grey took up the decanter with a 
 cordial smile on his face, walked towards 
 the tower-room, the first-floor room in 
 the Tower of Silence upon the top of 
 which the wasted skeleton of the huo'e 
 tank stood out clear against the quiet 
 summer stars. 
 
 It was now past eleven o'clock. No 
 
212 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 profounder silence reigned by night in 
 deserted mine deep in the bowels of the 
 earth, in Asian desert open to the 
 glittering stars and the pale radiance of 
 the moon, on the dark peaks of mighty 
 alp that reaches upward into the thin 
 windless air, than in the chambers and 
 passages of the fearful Manor House. 
 
 As he draws near the door of the 
 tower -room he carries the decanter of 
 brandy in one hand, a lighted candle in 
 the other. When only a few feet separate 
 him from the door he pauses suddenly, 
 and looks earnestly forward. There are 
 two keys for that door, one is on his 
 ring, the other is in the possession of his 
 wife. He holds the lamp high above his 
 head, and listens intently. Yes ; there 
 is someone inside. 
 
 While he waits he hears a lock shot 
 Presently the door opens, and with a cry 
 of surprise and fear his wife confronts him. 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC. 213 
 
 " Bee," he says, without allowing the 
 smile to relax, " is this you ? I thought 
 you were gone to bed." 
 
 " I went to my room," says the unhappy 
 woman, trembling and looking down, " but 
 I could not sleep. I was very nervous 
 and — and, Wat, I thought a glass of port 
 might do me good." 
 
 " Of course it will. Of course it will," 
 he says, in a soft voice. " I was just going 
 to put this in the cupboard." He holds 
 up the decanter. 
 
 " What is that ? " she asks, in a voice 
 full of uneasiness and fear. 
 
 " Only a little brandy. It's not a rattle- 
 snake or a petard that you need be afraid 
 of, Bee," he replies, in a bantering tone. 
 
 " No, no, Wat," she cries, drawing 
 back a pace and holding up her hands 
 as though she saw some fearful object 
 in her way. " We don't want any brandy 
 here. Indeed we don't." 
 
214 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 " What nonsense ! " lie laughs. " But, 
 seriously, Bee, you know we must have- 
 some brandy here. Suppose one of the 
 servants, or any chance caller were to 
 become suddenly faint, wdiat could you 
 do without brandy ? " 
 
 " Don't put it there, Wat ! For my 
 sake, for God's sake, don't put it there ? " 
 She covers her face with her hands, and 
 trembles again. 
 
 " There now, Bee, go to bed, and don't 
 be silly. I should never be able to forgive 
 myself if any harm came of there being 
 no brandy that could be readily got at." 
 
 With slow heavy steps the woman 
 passes him, and, as she reaches the end 
 of the short corridor, throws up her 
 hands to heaven, sobs out, " God be 
 merciful to me ! " and bursts into tears. 
 
 He waits until she is out of the pas- 
 sage, then shrugs his shoulders, and, with 
 the old, genial smile upon his face deposits 
 
A FLASK OF COGNAC 215 
 
 the decanter of cognac in the cupboard 
 of the room on the first floor of the 
 tower, of that tower which, in a moment 
 of grim humour, he had called the Tower 
 of Silence. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 
 
 Mr. Grey breakfasted early, Mrs. Grey 
 late. Nothing was said by either to the 
 other on the night of the lGth. On 
 Friday morning, the morning of the 17th 
 of August, 1866, Mrs. Grey was still 
 sleeping when her husband left the house. 
 The morning was bright and clear, 
 and as the banker strode on briskly to 
 the city he hummed an air to keep him 
 company. His voice was indifferent, his 
 ear was indifferent, and yet it was more 
 invigorating to hear him blundering out 
 wild approximations to a tunc than to 
 listen to a moderately accompli -lied draw- 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 217 
 
 inff-room vocalist. The banker seemed 
 unable to keep the natural gladness of 
 his nature within bounds ; the accomplished 
 vocalist follows an every-day handicraft or 
 trade with the tools of which he is familiar 
 and expert. 
 
 As Grey walked to his office that bright 
 Friday morning he met many friends and 
 acquaintances. He had a nod, a wave of 
 the hand, a cheerful word, a kind enquiry, 
 a jovial wish, a congratulation for each, 
 according to person and circumstances. 
 
 He carried his black bag in his hand. 
 In the black bag were some books, some 
 papers, and the revolver. Nothing par- 
 ticular occurred to him on the way to 
 the Bank. Nothing particular awaited 
 him upon his arrival at the office. All 
 was going on smoothly and prosperously 
 — but very slowly, very slowly towards 
 bringing back the baronet's money. 
 
 Two was his luncheon hour, and at 
 
218 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 two he went out. He lunched at his 
 club, and then strolled down to the 
 Chamber of Commerce to see the latest 
 Exchange telegrams, and have a chat 
 with some of the merchants and traders 
 and shipowners of Daneford. He got 
 back to the office at a little after three. 
 
 Nothing particular had occurred during 
 his absence. He went into his private 
 room and disposed of some routine affairs. 
 Then, having no business to do, he threw 
 up the window, and looking out, began 
 to whistle softly a recitative of his own 
 invention. 
 
 After a little while he stopped whistling, 
 and thought : ." I shall be here two hours 
 by myself this evening. I don't think I 
 could do anything better than burn that 
 book." In a little while more he made 
 up his mind. " Yes ; I will burn it. It 
 would tell against me in any case. Even 
 suppose by any miracle I am able to get 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 219' 
 
 that money together again, the dates 
 would betray me. Then it is better to 
 have neither book nor Stock than a tell- 
 tale book only. Dead men and burnt 
 books tell no tales. Yes ; up the chimney 
 it shall go. If I am able to replace that 
 money, the making of a new book will 
 be an easy task, a graceful amusement." 
 
 Mr. Grey had always kept the Midharst 
 (Consols) account in his own handwriting, 
 and in a book to which none but himself 
 had access. This was a small book bound 
 in rough calf, having a patent lock and 
 key. Before the Bank closed at four 
 o'clock he went down to the strong-room 
 and took up this book to his private 
 office. 
 
 By about half-past four all the clerks 
 had left the office, and Mr. Aldridge had 
 gone out to pick up an appetite for dinner. 
 Grey locked the two doors that led into 
 his office, opened the little ledger, and 
 
220 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 having cut the book out of the cover, he 
 locked up the cover in a safe in the wall 
 of his own office. There were two reasons 
 for doing this : 1. The cover was, with 
 the appliances at his command, indestruc- 
 tible. 2. He could get new paper bound 
 into the old cover ; and those of his staff 
 who were familiar with the outside of the 
 book would not be able to detect any 
 difference between the original and the 
 counterfeit. 
 
 When the cover of the book had been 
 concealed under lock and key lie sat down 
 in front of the grate, and began tearing 
 up the book into single leaves, and 
 burning each one separately in the empty 
 grate. 
 
 As the record of the baronet's twenty 
 years of grinding, exaction, and penurious 
 living changed into flame and smoke and 
 ashes, Grey's thoughts were busy with the 
 awful aspects of his position, and now, 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 221 
 
 for the first time, a new element of fear 
 entered into the ease. 
 
 He suddenly stopped in his work and 
 looked round him with a ghastly smile. 
 Last night he had been calculating 
 that his only way of avoiding exposure 
 lay through the freedom of himself to 
 marry Maud. But suppose anything were 
 to happen to his wife now. Suppose she 
 died that very day ; suppose she had died 
 a week ago, a month ago; what would 
 have occurred ? He should then be a 
 childless widower, younger in appearance 
 and in manner than in years, and even 
 young enough in years to be the suitor 
 of any girl. Was it likely if he were 
 so circumstanced Sir Alexander might not 
 think of altering the will, of introducing 
 into it another guardian, executor, or 
 trustee ? True, Sir Alexander was not an 
 ordinary man, and had unlimited con- 
 fidence in him, Grey ; but surely he could. 
 
•222 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 not be such a fool as to leave his daughter 
 and his daughter's fortune in the hands 
 solely of a popular, good-looking, and 
 an agreeable widower of forty-five ? 
 
 The thought flurried him, and he 
 gasped and covered his face with his 
 handkerchief, and leaned upon the mantel- 
 piece. 
 
 Last night it had appeared to him 
 nothing more advantageous to his fortune 
 could arise than the death of his wife. 
 Now that event seemed the most disas- 
 trous which could befall him. The more 
 he looked at the whole situation the more 
 hopeless his position appeared. What last 
 night he regarded as the gateway to 
 deliverance now was the cavern of ruin. 
 Well, he had begun burning this book, 
 and he might as well finish it. Destrovino- 
 this could have no important influence 
 for evil on the case, and might be bene- 
 ficial or have a mitigating influence. 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 223 
 
 At last the whole book lay in a mass 
 of black and blue ashes at his feet. He 
 stood in front of the pile for a few 
 moments thinking. "Between that book 
 and me there is great similarity. It was 
 once truthful, then it recorded a lie, and 
 •now it is burnt and black. I was once 
 honest ; I fell ; and now my position, my 
 prospects, and my hopes are in ashes. 
 There is no chance of escape." 
 
 It was after five o'clock. He rang 
 the bell ; as he did so, he heard the 
 street-bell ring also. 
 
 "Aldridge coming back from his con- 
 stitutional." Then, correcting himself, be 
 thought : "Of course, Aldridge doesn't 
 ring." 
 
 He unlocked the doors, and in a few 
 minutes the servant knocked and entered. 
 
 " I want you to tidy up that grate ; 
 I've been burning some old letters," said 
 Grey. 
 
224 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 "Yes, sir; a letter for you, sir, just 
 
 come." 
 
 " All right ; leave it on my table." 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir, but it's from the 
 Castle, and marked immediate." 
 
 The banker took it and glanced at 
 the superscription as the servant with- 
 drew. 
 
 "From Mrs. Grant," he muttered. 
 " What can it be now ? " 
 
 He tore open the envelope and read 
 the contents hastily. The note was very 
 brief. Sir Alexander had had a bad 
 night, and was rather worse this morning. 
 He particular!)* wanted to see Mr. Grey 
 at once. Would Mr. Grey be so ofood 
 as to come instantly upon receipt of this ? 
 The words in italics were underlined heavily 
 three or four times. 
 
 " What can this be ? " he thought. 
 " The last time I got a note from Mrs. 
 Grant asking me to go to the Castle I 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 225 
 
 was in the final extremity of apprehension, 
 and all came much better than I could have 
 dared to hope. There seems no possibility 
 of a favourable solution of the present 
 situation. If the old man is sinking, that 
 will give me only a year — and that is the 
 least terrible thing can cause this hasty 
 summons. Well, go I must, and at once." 
 
 He leaped lightly down the stairs, 
 carrying his bag in his hand, and was 
 soon driving rapidly towards Island Ferry. 
 
 Two miles lay between him and the 
 city before he remembered his appoint- 
 ment with his wife on board the Rodwell. 
 
 " Never mind," he thought, " I'll board 
 the steamboat as she passes the Island ; 
 that will make it all right." 
 
 By six o'clock he had reached Island 
 Ferry. Without the loss of a moment he 
 crossed over to the Island and ascended 
 towards the Castle. 
 
 A servant at once conducted him to 
 
 vol. i. 15 
 
226 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Mrs. Grant, who was waiting for him in 
 the hall-room off the grand entrance-hall. 
 
 " Mr. Grey, I am so glad you have 
 come ; we are in such fearful anxiety. 
 Poor Sir Alexander has got worse and 
 worse ever since I wrote to you. The 
 doctors say this is what they have been 
 dreading all along." 
 
 The little woman was in a state of the 
 greatest excitement, and had completely 
 lost all sense of proportion. The standards 
 of her feelings had been broken by 
 her agitation, and everything that went 
 wrong seemed of equal importance and 
 mischief. 
 
 "What is the matter now?" the banker 
 .asked, in a soft sympathetic voice. " I 
 hope Miss Midharst," he added, before he 
 Save the little widow time to answer, " is 
 kept as free as possible from these sad 
 and depressing scenes. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; that is, I mean the poor 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 227 
 
 child is fearfully distressed. She has been 
 with her father all day. It's not good for 
 her, but then she wouldn't come away. I 
 think if you spoke to her it would do her 
 good. She used to mind a good deal 
 what I said to her, but all this day she 
 sits there, staring as if the room was full 
 of ghosts. I fear there's something bad 
 the matter with the whole place ; and only 
 for darling Maud, I'm sure I shouldn't 
 stop an hour. And to listen to him is 
 something dreadful. He talks of nothing 
 but his money and you and robbery " 
 
 " What ! ' ; exclaimed Grey, loudly and 
 sharply. 
 
 " Now," she cried, " you are offended 
 with me just because I am nervous and 
 -excitable. Maybe you'd be excited your- 
 self, Mr. Grey, if he was turning to you 
 every minute and saying you were a wolf 
 in sheep's clothing, and that you wanted 
 to rob his child of the fortune he had 
 
228 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 laid by for her. You wouldn't like to be 
 called a robber, and you're a man, and I 
 am only a nervous woman ; and men are 
 more used to that kind of language than 
 women, although, until now, I did not 
 know that gentlemen ever used such 
 words." 
 
 Here Mrs. Grant broke down com- 
 pletely, and sobbed. 
 
 By this time Grey had recovered from 
 the appalling shock caused by Mrs. Grant's 
 association of himself with theft. He went 
 up to the sobbing woman, and in his 
 gentlest accents, having placed his hand 
 reassuringly on her shoulder, said : 
 
 "Mrs. Grant, I am exceedingly sorry 
 if my hasty exclamation has caused you 
 any annoyance. Believe me, nothing was 
 further from my intention than to disturb 
 you under the distressing circumstance 
 you describe, and in the very shattered 
 condition in which your nerves must be. 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 229 
 
 Forgive me, pray. Do say that you 
 forgive me." 
 
 He pleaded in his most winning voice 
 and manner ; lie looked upon the friend- 
 liness of Mrs. Grant towards him as of 
 great importance. 
 
 " It wasn't your fault, Mr. Grey," said 
 Mrs. Grant, quieting her sobs. " I know 
 I am not fit for anything of this kind ; 
 it always knocks me up." 
 
 " No wonder. Of course, as you say, 
 .such expressions are never heard among 
 gentlemen " 
 
 She interrupted him. 
 
 " I hope I didn't say anything un- 
 becoming to you ; if I did, I didn't mean 
 it. I am so worried and confused I don't 
 know what I'm saying." By this time 
 she had forgotten the cause of her tears. 
 What Grey said made her believe she 
 herself had uttered something offensive to 
 the banker. " I wonder can it be that 
 
230 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 I have caught the fever from Sir Alexander,, 
 and am not in my right mind'?" 
 
 " No, no, no," laughed Grey reassur- 
 ingly. " You need not be afraid of that." 
 He had no desire to recall to her memory 
 the words which had drawn from him 
 the abrupt and disconcerting exclamation. 
 "And so," he said, in a bland voice, 
 "poor Sir Alexander's head is wandering." 
 
 " Oh, yes. He began to be queer last 
 night, and got worse all the night. This 
 morning we sent for the doctors, and 
 they came again in the afternoon. At 
 the latter visit they said I had better- 
 send for you, as you were so much in 
 Sir Alexander's mind, both when he was 
 raving and when he wasn't." 
 
 " Then he has lucid intervals ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes — or, at least, not quite lucid^ 
 There are times when he is less wild than 
 others ; but I think his mind is not quite 
 free at any time. I have been keeping 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 231 
 
 you here instead of taking you direct to 
 him, as I should have done. You will 
 excuse me ; my poor head is quite gone 
 too. Will you come with me to him 
 now { 
 
 "Yes," he answered, with a profound 
 bow. 
 
 As he followed her through the dull 
 stately passages that, although it was still 
 full daylight, were dim and funereal, he 
 tried to pierce the veil of the future. 
 How would this sudden development 
 of the old man's disease affect him ? 
 Was the old man in his comparatively 
 lucid moments capable of altering his will ? 
 What was the cause of the old man's 
 desire to see him ? And, above all, how 
 had this idea of theft come upon him ? 
 
 So far as he could now form an 
 opinion of the case, he did not feel 
 reassured. 
 
 Suppose Mrs. Grant's account of the 
 
232 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 baronet's condition of mind in the less 
 excited moments was overdrawn, and that 
 while in his periods of delirium he was 
 haunted by goblin fears of robbers, in 
 his more collected phases he might be 
 troubled with reasonable dread of theft 
 or misappropriation or fraud. Did the 
 old man desire to destroy or alter his 
 will ? That was the vital question. If 
 he did, then surely the lead would over- 
 take the gold. 
 
 The gold ! That gold could never be 
 won back, not in as many years as it 
 took the baronet to save it up. Not in 
 twice as many years, and he might have 
 no more than one year. The gold could 
 never overtake the lead now — that is, 
 the gold, the Consols. 
 
 But the gold of a wedding-ring for 
 Miss Midharst would balance the rive-tons 
 weight of the baronet's. Little over half 
 an ounce of gold would outweigh five 
 
ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH. 233 
 
 tons ; a ring that cost no more than three 
 guineas would balance a deficit of five 
 hundred and fifty thousand pounds ! 
 
 Mrs. Grant softly opened the door of 
 the sick chamber, and motioning someone 
 inside to come near, she said, as Miss 
 Midharst approached : 
 
 " Maud, dear, here is Mr. Grey ; he 
 came at once." 
 
 The girl offered him her hand, and Grey 
 took it respectfully, tenderly, and held it, 
 saying : 
 
 " I am deeply grieved, Miss Midharst, 
 at what Mrs. Grant tells me. I hope this 
 may be only a temporary affection. How 
 is Sir Alexander now ? " 
 
 " Oh, he's very, very bad ! " sobbed 
 the girl, in a whisper. " It was kind 
 of you to come. He talks of you 
 always." 
 
 " I am, believe me, Miss Midharst, 
 deeply grieved for him, and — you." 
 
234 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 Nothing could be more kind and sym- 
 pathetic than his voice and manner. 
 
 " He talks of nothing but you and the- 
 money," whispered the girl, through her 
 tears. 
 
 At that moment a shrill shout came 
 from the bed, followed by the words : 
 
 " Ah, Grey, is that you % You thieving 
 scoundrel ! Do you dare to come into my 
 house, under my roof, after stealing my 
 darling's fortune ! Bring me my pistols, 
 I say — some one bring me my pistols!. 
 I will shoot this miscreant banker Grey.. 
 My pistols, I say ! " 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 BY THE STATE BED. 
 
 For a moment Grey paused irresolutely 
 on the threshold of the sick room. This 
 was the most alarming ordeal to which 
 he had been subjected. Could it be that 
 by any untoward circumstance of disastrous 
 fate the old man had discovered the truth ? 
 
 To be loudly, violently accused of the 
 crime he had committed by the man whose 
 money he had stolen, and in the presence 
 of that man's daughter ! 
 
 He had often in his worst moments 
 imagined the position he now occupied, 
 but had never dared to think of, it had 
 never entered his moments of wildest fear 
 
23G THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 to realise, such a scene conducted in the 
 presence of Miss Midharst and Mrs. Grant. 
 And now to the horrors of hearing such 
 words from the defrauded man's lips, was 
 added the awful question, the appalling 
 uncertainty in the questions : Did the 
 baronet know anything ? Did he know 
 all ? 
 
 His name for honour, for honesty, the 
 existence of the respectable old institution 
 which had been handed down to him by 
 his father unsullied, his very life, hung 
 upon these two questions. There was only 
 one chance between him and ruin, between 
 him and death. At these thoughts he 
 made a j>rc>digious effort, and turning to 
 the two distracted woman with a forced 
 smile, and a lip he could not keep from 
 trembling, said : 
 
 " I fear my presence only excites Sir 
 Alexander. Had I not better retire until 
 he is more calm ? " 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 237 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Grey," said Maud through her 
 tears, " you must not mind his words. 
 He does not know what he says. He 
 does not understand what is said to him. 
 He does not even know who is in the 
 room when he is in this state. My poor 
 father, oh, my poor father ! J: She covered 
 her face with her hands and sobbed out. 
 
 Grey began to breathe more freely. 
 He whispered, as though the weight of a 
 mountain were rolling off him, "He does 
 not know what he says. He does 
 not know who is in the room. Poor 
 gentleman ! Poor Sir Alexander ! I am 
 profoundly sorry for him and for you, 
 Miss Midharst. You can understand how 
 much I was surprised to hear him, who 
 has so long relied upon me, use such 
 words to me. It was, you must admit," 
 he looked from the woman to the girl in 
 deferential appeal, "rather startling." 
 
 " We know what he thinks of you 
 
■238 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 when he is in his right senses, Mr. Grey," 
 said Mrs. Grant. "We know he has the 
 greatest confidence in you." 
 
 The banker bowed deeply, and when 
 he had straightened himself once more, 
 regarded the widow with profound and 
 sorrowful attention. 
 
 Mrs. Grant continued : "In his lucid 
 moments he asked for you, and seemed 
 anxious to see you on business, as of old ; 
 but when he raved as he did just now, 
 lie accused us all of taking his money." 
 
 " What a sad and distracting form of 
 delusion!" murmured the banker. He 
 could scarcely contain himself. He would 
 at that moment have forfeited the Hyc 
 thousand pounds advanced on the mort- 
 gage of the Rodwell if he might throw 
 his arms into the air and shout out and 
 laugh and dance. 
 
 The sick man spoke of everyone as 
 a thief in his frenzy, but in his clear 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 230 
 
 moments spoke of him, Grey, as of old ! 
 He did not suspect him exclusively ; the 
 indictment to which he had listened in 
 paralysed terror had been by accident 
 preferred against him ; by accident it 
 might have been preferred against any 
 other human being with whose name Sir 
 Alexander was familiar ! 
 
 The weight of earth had rolled back 
 from his breast, and he was breathing 
 more freely than for many a long day. 
 
 The three now left the door and walked 
 into the room. At best the vast chamber 
 was gloomy, but now all light but a 
 faint dim glow that clung to the inside 
 of the curtains was excluded. 
 
 Grey placed himself at the side of 
 the vast bedstead. Sir Alexander had 
 sold off all his personal furniture ; he 
 occupied one of the state rooms and slept 
 in one of the enormous state bedsteads ; 
 these bedsteads were in the deeds he 
 
240 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 could not alter, and had to go down to 
 the next heir. The first look the "banker 
 cast at the face of the sick man gave him 
 a shock. 
 
 The old baronet had always had a 
 colour in his cheeks ; now all the colour 
 was gone from the cheeks and gathered 
 into the temples and forehead. The 
 wrinkled forehead was of a dull brick 
 colour. The great forked dark vein of 
 the forehead stood up out of the dry red 
 skin like the forked mullion of a gothic 
 window, against whose crimson jDanes the 
 west is red. In the temples of the old 
 man the rugged veins were swollen and 
 knotted, and in the purple hollows between 
 the dark blue knots a quick feeble pulse 
 fluttered and hurried forward like a 
 frightened hunted beast. Through the 
 counterpane the thin form showed sharply. 
 The breathing was quick and unquiet, 
 the eyes staring and fixed upon the carved 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 241 
 
 oak ceiling. Apparently the delirious 
 paroxysm liacl passed, and the patient 
 was suffering from modified collapse. 
 
 "He will be better presently, and may 
 recognise you," whispered Mrs. Grant into 
 Grey's ear. She stood by his side. At 
 the foot stood Maud, weeping softly, 
 silently. For a while no one moved. 
 
 Gradually the breathing of the sick 
 man grew more steady, and the fluttering 
 pulse in the hollow temples more regular. 
 
 " In a few minutes," whispered the 
 widow, "he will be quite collected." 
 
 As she had foretold, his eyes descended 
 from the ceiling and began running over 
 the room and those present, as if trying 
 to recover memory. At length they were 
 fixed on Grey and did not move from 
 him. Although the eye was dull and 
 clouded, there was a look of intelligence 
 in it. It was the eye of a weakened 
 intellect rather than of a disordered one. 
 
 vol. i. 16 
 
242 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 " Ah, Grey, is that you ? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir Alexander. I hope you feel 
 better ? " 
 
 " I am quite well. I have been greatly 
 troubled about that money, those Consols. 
 They tell me they have been sold. Is it 
 true that my Consols have been sold ? I 
 ask you in the presence of my daughter, 
 for whom they were saved, have they been 
 sold ? " The sick man's eyes were filmy ; 
 but while they were dull to the perception 
 of surrounding objects, they seemed to bo 
 partly closed against objects of natural 
 vision only that they might be partly 
 opened to unascertainable forms and figures 
 of supernatural view. 
 
 Grey's heart quailed. Who were 
 " they " that had informed him of the 
 fraud ? What did the sick man know of 
 the fraud ? What did he surmise ? Was 
 there anything but imagination to account 
 for these fears, these hideous questions, 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 243 
 
 this awful ordeal ? He was sorry he had 
 left his bag below in the little room where 
 Mrs. Grant had received him. Nothing: 
 could save him now but a calm exterior 
 and intrepid audacity. He cleared his 
 throat to make sure his voice was obedient 
 to his will, and answered boldly, but 
 softly : 
 
 " No one has sold the Consols, Sir 
 Alexander. I answer you faithfully, in 
 your presence and in the presence of 
 Miss Midharst, for whose benefit they 
 have been acquired and put by." 
 
 He was amazed himself at the firmness 
 and clearness of his voice. If it had been 
 merely repeating the words of another 
 man, his voice could not have been 
 less open to suspicion ; if he had been 
 pronouncing a most consoling truth, 
 his manner could not have been more 
 benignly reassuring. Instead of the words 
 being those of another, they were so 
 
244 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 intimately his own that his existence 
 depended upon their utterance ; instead 
 of being true, they contained a lie so 
 monstrous under the circumstances that 
 they were as false and wicked as a blas- 
 phemous false oath. He thought to himself 
 grimly, as he rapidly reviewed the words 
 and the import of his voice : " I am acting 
 in a play of the Devil's writing, and must 
 do honour to the character I represent 
 and credit to the author." 
 
 The eyes of the old man were fixed 
 on the banker's face as he said : " What 
 you tell me of my money, her money, is 
 quite true ? It is quite safe ? No one 
 has sold out?" 
 
 " It is quite true ; no one has sold 
 out." 
 
 "Swear it!" 
 
 " I swear it." 
 
 " Mrs. Grant, get the Book. I am a 
 magistrate, and you shall swear the formal 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 245 
 
 oath, so that you may be punished if 
 you are hiding the truth from an old 
 helpless man." 
 
 Mrs. Grant placed a Testament on the 
 bed beside Mr. Grey. The latter took up 
 the Book. He did not care to question 
 the legality of such an oath. He thought 
 he would humour the old man. A crime 
 or two more were nothing to him now, 
 particularly when these crimes helped to 
 cover up the other crime of embezzlement, 
 theft, fraud — call it what you will. 
 
 Mr. Grey took up the Testament, and 
 Sir Alexander, in a confused way, repeated 
 words which could not be clearly heard, 
 but ended with the clause usual to the 
 ■ending of a formal oath. 
 
 Mr. Grey kissed the Book reverentially, 
 and murmured the final words. As he 
 uttered the words, he could not avoid 
 the reflection that if he were acting in a 
 play of the Devil's writing, some of the 
 
24G THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 words to be uttered had a peculiar aspect 
 as coming from the Master of Evil. 
 
 Mr. Grey put the Book on the bed, 
 and looked with reassuring glance at both 
 the women. The old baronet muttered 
 to himself indistinctly for a few seconds. 
 "Bad dreams, bad dreams," he said dis- 
 tinctly at last ; " they were only dreams." 
 
 Mr. Grey looked round again at the 
 women and inclined his head significantly 
 to them, as though he would say : " Poor 
 Sir Alexander ! His dreams must have 
 been bad indeed, if he fancied anyone had 
 taken his money." 
 
 By this the great flush had disappeared 
 from the old man's forehead, the veins 
 had subsided, and a deadly pallor covered 
 his features from forehead to chin. During 
 the paroxysms of his delirium, it seemed 
 as though his head was in danger of 
 bursting from too great a supply of 
 heated blood : now it looked as if the 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 247 
 
 walls of his skull and the flesh of his 
 face were about to crumble and fall in 
 for want of fluid sufficient to sustain 
 their weight. But in the eye still lingered 
 the heat and flickered the fire of the fever. 
 He lay still for a while, and seemed to be 
 about to fall asleep. Presently, however, 
 all were startled to hear his voice ring 
 out clear and firm, high above their 
 notion of his present strength, clear above 
 their notion of his intellectual capacity : 
 
 " Henry Grey, take her hand, my 
 daughters hand, and lead her here — no 
 the other hand — give her your left hand, 
 Henry Grey." 
 
 Mr. Grey walked to where the girl 
 stood, now pale and tearless, at the foot 
 of the bed, and offered her his right 
 hand ; then his left, and led her to the 
 side of the bed, where he had been 
 standing. 
 
 " Now, Henry Grey, take the Testament 
 
248 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 in your right hand. I am going to make 
 you swear — I am a deputy-lieutenant — to 
 guard with all your power and wiles, my 
 only daughter, Maud Midharst, herself and 
 her fortune and her happiness. Say the 
 words after me." 
 
 " Herself and her fortune and her 
 happiness to guard with all my power," he 
 repeated. 
 
 "All your power and wiles," insisted 
 the old man, in a tone of exasperation. 
 
 " My power and — wiles," repeated Mr. 
 Grey, after a slight hesitation. 
 
 " To act as executor of my will, trustee 
 to her fortune, and guardian of my child. 
 So help me, God." 
 
 Mr. Grey repeated the words with 
 solemn deliberation. 
 
 "Kiss the Book." 
 
 Mr. Grey bent his head reverentially 
 over the sacred volume and kissed it 
 devoutly. 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 249 
 
 " Kiss the Book, my child. Take it 
 in your own right hand and kiss it. It 
 is the history of the life and sufferings 
 and death of our Lord, and something 
 of great moment is conducting." 
 
 " Kiss the Book, you also," looking 
 towards Mrs. Grant. 
 
 She did as he desired. 
 
 " Now, my daughter, and you, Henry 
 Grey, both together hold that Book, which 
 is the history of the life and sufferings 
 and death of our Lord, to my lips, for I 
 am weak and unable, and I will kiss it 
 last of all." 
 
 They placed the Book against his lips, 
 and when he had kissed it they drew it 
 back, and placed the Testament on the 
 bed. 
 
 Mr. Grey folded his arms tightly across 
 his chest ; he had a feeling that his chest 
 would burst if lie did not shout out and 
 relieve it. 
 
250 THE WEIRD SISTER*. 
 
 " My daughter," said the sick man, "if 
 I should never get off this bed again — and 
 I feel that something great is conducting — 
 when I am dead you will look to him for 
 all advice and guidance. He will be your 
 friend, your only friend, who can be of 
 aid to you when I am dead. You will 
 lean upon him. He will guard your money 
 and see that no one does you ill or cheats 
 you. He is an honest man, Maud. He- 
 has taken care of your fortune for me 
 until now ; he will take care of it for you 
 when I am dead. You will have no one 
 else but him ; no friend in all the world 
 but Henry Grey." 
 
 "Oh, my God !" burst from the banker. 
 If the hangman were in the room, and 
 any word spoken by him, Grey, was to* 
 be the signal for his death, he could not 
 restrain himself. 
 
 For a moment they all three looked 
 at him in grave surprise. His words 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 251 
 
 were not perhaps improper to the grave 
 occasion, but his manner of uttering them 
 had something startling in it. There was 
 in his tone a cry of wild appeal against 
 an inexorable decree of prodigious woe. 
 His voice had more the sound of a 
 brute's inarticulate cry of despair than 
 any human agony fitted to human words. 
 It was a death-cry, the death-cry of some 
 fine instinct of the human soul. It was 
 a cry the like of which no man utters 
 twice in a lifetime. 
 
 The old man regarded the banker for a 
 moment with a look of surprise. Then the 
 expression of the old man's face softened, 
 and he said : " Grey, my arm is weak. I 
 cannot raise it. Take my hand. You 
 will be good to her when I am dead. I 
 know what the world may say. It may 
 say, Grey, that you and I are not 
 equals ; that I might have bestowed the 
 guardianship of my daughter's fortune 
 
252 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 among houses such as the Fleureys' or the 
 Midharsts'. But I know what you are 
 and what your father was, and I am placing 
 what I value above all earthly things in 
 your keeping. I am an old man, and 
 the doctors may be right this time. I 
 .am old and weak, Henry Grey, and I 
 want you to be her friend when I am 
 dead. The world may say what it pleases 
 about you as guardian. I am firm in my 
 faith in you. No orphan, friendless — the 
 last, I may say, of her house — had ever 
 a more careful or prudent or wise guardian 
 than you. I am old and weak. There 
 is one more favour I would ask of you 
 before you go — for I have said all. You 
 will not refuse an old man on his death- 
 bed, Henry Grey ? " 
 
 " No," in a faint thin whisper. 
 
 " I am weak, and cannot do it myself. 
 Kaise up my hand held in yours, and 
 place your hand against my lips, that I 
 
BY THE STATE BED. 253. 
 
 may kiss the hand which is to shield my 
 daughter when I am gone." 
 
 " Oh, Sir Alexander I " in a tone of 
 agonized protest. 
 
 " I am very old and very weak. You 
 will not, because I am old and weak 
 and cannot raise your hand, deny me 
 this pleasure." 
 
 The banker did as he was asked. 
 
 When he had placed the cold thin 
 hand back again on the bed, the baronet 
 sighed and murmured : "I am tired. 
 I will try to sleep awhile. You may go, 
 Henry Grey. God bless you, Henry Grey ! 
 Now I am at rest ! " 
 
 With a deep bow to the ladies, Mr. 
 Grey left the room. He went down a 
 passage and then turned into another. 
 Here he was alone, out of sight and 
 earshot. He threw his arms heavily up, 
 straight above his head, and flung himself 
 against the wall with a groan, beat his 
 
254 THE WEIRD SISTERS. 
 
 arms and hands against the wall, and 
 struck his forehead against the wall. 
 
 " Do I live ? ' : he cried ; " or am I 
 already among the damned ? M 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS ^lND EVANS, GREAT NEW STREET, EETTER LA>"E, E.C 
 
^ 
 
UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOI9-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 042260577