Although not of the north country myself, I knew the meaning of

the phrase. Garthwaite suspected that the master was nothing less
than mad!

Romayne took my arm when we were alone--we walked slowly from end
to end of the Belvidere. The moon was, by this time, low in the

heavens; but her mild mysterious light still streamed over the
roof of the house and the high heathy ground round it. I looked

attentively at Romayne. He was deadly pale; his hand shook as it
rested on my arm--and that was all. Neither in look nor manner

did he betray the faintest sign of mental derangement. He had
perhaps needlessly alarmed the faithful old servant by something

that he had said or done. I determined to clear up that doubt
immediately.

"You left the table very suddenly," I said. "Did you feel ill?"
"Not ill," he replied. "I was frightened. Look at me--I'm

frightened still."
"What do you mean?"

Instead of answering, he repeated the strange question which he
had put to me downstairs.

"Do you call it a quiet night?"
Considering the time of year, and the exposed situation of the

house, the night was almost preternaturally quiet. Throughout the
vast open country all round us, not even a breath of air could be

heard. The night-birds were away, or were silent at the time. But
one sound was audible, when we stood still and listened--the cool

quiet bubble of a little stream, lost to view in the
valley-ground to the south.

"I have told you already," I said. "So still a night I never
remember on this Yorkshire moor."

He laid one hand heavily on my shoulder. "What did the poor boy
say of me, whose brother I killed?" he asked. "What words did we

hear through the dripping darkness of the mist?"
"I won't encourage you to think of them. I refuse to repeat the

words."
He pointed over the northward parapet.

"It doesn't matter whether you accept or refuse," he said, "I
hear the boy at this moment--there!"

He repeated the horrid words--marking the pauses in the utterance
of them with his finger, as if they were sounds that he heard:

"Assassin! Assassin! where are you?"
"Good God!" I cried. "You don't mean that you really _hear_ the

voice?"
"Do you hear what I say? I hear the boy as plainly as you hear

me. The voice screams at me through the clear moonlight, as it
screamed at me through the sea-fog. Again and again. It's all

round the house. _That_ way now, where the light just touches on
the tops of the heather. Tell the servants to have the horses

ready the first thing in the morning. We leave Vange Abbey
to-morrow."

These were wild words. If he had spoken them wildly, I might have
shared the butler's conclusion that his mind was deranged. There

was no undue vehemence in his voice or his manner. He spoke with
a melancholy resignation--he seemed like a prisoner submitting to

a sentence that he had deserved. Remembering the cases of men
suffering from nervous disease who had been haunted by

apparitions, I asked if he saw any imaginary figure under the
form of a boy.

"I see nothing," he said; "I only hear. Look yourself. It is in
the last degree improbable--but let us make sure that nobody has

followed me from Boulogne, and is playing me a trick."
We made the circuit of the Belvidere. On its eastward side the

house wall was built against one of the towers of the old Ab bey.
On the westward side, the ground sloped steeply down to a deep

pool or tarn. Northward and southward, there was nothing to be
seen but the open moor. Look where I might, with the moonlight to

make the view plain to me, the solitude was as void of any living
creature as if we had been surrounded by the awful dead world of

the moon.
"Was it the boy's voice that you heard on the voyage across the

Channel?" I asked.
"Yes, I heard it for the first time--down in the engine-room;

rising and falling, rising and falling, like the sound of the
engines themselves."

"And when did you hear it again?"
"I feared to hear it in London. It left me, I should have told

you, when we stepped ashore out of the steamboat. I was afraid
that the noise of the traffic in the streets might bring it back

to me. As you know, I passed a quiet night. I had the hope that
my imagination had deceived me--that I was the victim of a

delusion, as people say. It is no delusion. In the perfect
tranquillity of this place the voice has come back to me. While

we were at table I heard it again--behind me, in the library. I
heard it still, when the door was shut. I ran up here to try if

it would follow me into the open air. It _has_ followed me. We
may as well go down again into the hall. I know now that there is

no escaping from it. My dear old home has become horrible to me.
Do you mind returning to London tomorrow?"

What I felt and feared in this miserable state of things matters
little. The one chance I could see for Romayne was to obtain the

best medical advice. I sincerelyencouraged his idea of going
back to London the next day.

We had sat together by the hall fire for about ten minutes, when
he took out his handkerchief, and wiped away the perspiration

from his forehead, drawing a deep breath of relief. "It has
gone!" he said faintly.

"When you hear the boy's voice," I asked, "do you hear it
continuously?"

"No, at intervals; sometimes longer, sometimes shorter."
"And thus far, it comes to you suddenly, and leaves you

suddenly?"
"Yes."

"Do my questions annoy you?"
"I make no complaint," he said sadly. "You can see for

yourself--I patiently suffer the punishment that I have
deserved."

I contradicted him at once. "It is nothing of the sort! It's a
nervousmalady, which medical science can control and cure. Wait

till we get to London."
This expression of opinion produced no effect on him.

"I have taken the life of a fellow-creature," he said. "I have
closed the career of a young man who, but for me, might have

lived long and happily and honorably. Say what you may, I am of
the race of Cain. _ He_ had the mark set on his brow. I have _my_

ordeal. Delude yourself, if you like, with false hopes. I can
endure--and hope for nothing. Good-night."

VIII.
EARLY the next morning, the good old butler came to me, in great

perturbation, for a word of advice.
"Do come, sir, and look at the master! I can't find it in my

heart to wake him."
It was time to wake him, if we were to go to London that day. I

went into the bedroom. Although I was no doctor, the restorative
importance of that profound and quiet sleep impressed itself on

me so strongly, that I took the responsibility of leaving him
undisturbed. The event proved that I had acted wisely. He slept

until noon. There was no return of "the torment of the voice"--as
he called it, poor fellow. We passed a quiet day, excepting one

little interruption, which I am warned not to pass over without a
word of record in this narrative.