Thereupon she told me that many years ago he had joined their company, and shared their wandering fortune.  Her sister Sinnamenta, a beautiful girl beloved by the handsome Stanley Carew, had fascinated him, and he would have married her according to gypsy rites; but since her father did not believe that he meant to stay with the tribe longer than it suited him, he peremptorily refused his request.  Sir Massingberd left them; they struck tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, a mile from the frontier of Northumberland.  There the wretch followed her, and again proposed to go through the Cingari ceremony, and this time the father consented.  It was on the wedding-day that he gave my informant the shooting-flask as a remembrance, just before he and his wife went away southward.  Long months afterwards Sinnamenta returned heart-stricken, woebegone, about to become a mother, with nothing but wretchedness in the future, and even her happy past a dream dispelled.

The gypsies were at Fairburn again, and Sinnamenta’s father sent for Sir Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm being over the border.  An awful silence succeeded this disclosure.  Sir Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was well-nigh strangled with passion.  At last he caught Sinnamenta’s Wrist with fingers of steel.

“What man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?” he cried.  “Come along with me, my pretty one!”

Stanley Carew flung himself upon him, knife in hand; but the others plucked him backward, and Sir Massingberd signed to his wife to followed him, and she obeyed.  That night Stanley Carew was arrested on a false charge of horse-stealing, and lying witnesses soon afterwards brought him to the gallows.

“I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us,” concluded the old woman.  “But this I have heard, that when he told her of the death of Stanley Carew, she fell down like one dead, and presently, being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours.  Yonder,” she looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall, “the mother lives—­a maniac.  What else could keep me here in a place that tortures me with memories of my youth, and of loving faces that have crumbled into dust?  What else but the hope of one day seeing my little sister yet, and the vengeance of Heaven upon him who has worked her ruin?  If Massingberd Heath escape some awful end, there is no Avenger on high.  I am old, but I shall see it yet, I shall see it before I die.”

IV.—­The Curse Fulfilled