Mr. Long determined to buy a horse for me, and upon my suggestion that I wished Marmaduke Heath to spend more time in my company, he and I went up to the Hall to ask Sir Massingberd if he were willing.  The squire received us curtly, and upon hearing of my tutor’s intention, declared that he himself would select a horse for Marmaduke.  Then, since he wished to talk with Mr. Long concerning Mr. Chint, the family lawyer, he bade me go to his nephew’s room, calling upon Grimjaw, a loathsome old dog, to act as my guide.  This beast preceded me up the old oak staircase to a chamber door, before which it sat and whined.  Marmaduke opened this and admitted me, and we sat talking together.

My tutor found us together, and knowing the house better than the heir did, offered to play cicerone and show me over.  In the state bed-room, a great room facing the north, he disclosed to us a secret stairway that opened behind a full-length portrait.  Marmaduke, who had been unaware of its existence, grew ghastly pale.

“The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the library door,” said Mr. Long.  “I dare say that nobody has moved the picture for twenty years.”

“Yes, yes!” said Marmaduke passionately.  “My uncle has moved it.  When I was ill, upon my coming to Fairburn, I slept here, and I had terrible visions.  I see it all now.  He wanted to frighten me to death, or to make me mad.  He would come and stand by my bedside and stare at me.  Cruel—­ cruel coward!”

Then he begged us to go away.  “My uncle will wonder at your long delay.  He will suspect something,” he said.

“Peter,” observed my tutor gravely, as we went homeward, “whatever you may think of what has passed to-day, say nothing.  I am not so ignorant of the wrongs of that poor boy as I appear, but there is nothing for it but patience.”

II.—­A Gypsy’s Curse

In a few days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke had the like fortune.  My tutor examined the steed Sir Massingberd had bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of the curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride.  After we had left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with Marmaduke, and certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have taken more pains with the animal.  In the end he expressed himself highly satisfied.  Some days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the horse, behaved in a strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last became positively fiendish.  Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched head-first over a declivity.  When I found Marmaduke blood was at his mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere.

“Marmaduke, Marmaduke!” I cried.  “Speak!  Speak, if it be but a single word!  Great heaven, he is dead!”

“Dead!  No, not he,” answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear.  “The devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!”