“My little sister is not beaten now,” said the beldam.  “May God’s curse have found Sir Massingberd!  I would that I had his fleshless bones to show you.  Where he may be we know not; we only hope that in some hateful spot he may be suffering unimagined pains!”

By the next post I received bitter news from Harley Street.  A copy of the menacing epistle reached me from Harvey Gerard.  In a postscript Lucy added that Marmaduke was too ill to write.  An hour later Mr. Long and I set off to town, where we found the lad in a less morbid state than we had expected.  He had asked, and gained, Harvey Gerard’s permission to marry his daughter, and the beautiful girl was supporting him with all her strength.

The services of Townsend, the great Bow street runner, were called for; but in spite of his endeavours, no solution was discovered to the mystery of Sir Massingberd’s disappearance.  Fairburn Hall remained without a master, occupied only by the servants.

At last Marmaduke came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife, it was decreed that they must return to the old home.  Art changed that sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer under a curse.  But it was not until the christening feast of the young heir was celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd’s disappearance was discovered.

Some young boys, playing at hide-and-seek, were using the Wolsey oak for “home,” and, whilst waiting there, dug a hole with their knives, and came upon a life-preserver that the baronet had always carried.  Then a keeper climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was a skeleton inside.

“It’s my belief,” said the man, “that Sir Massingberd must have climbed up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk.”

Later, as I looked upon the ghastly relics of humanity, the old gypsy’s curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness.  “May he perish, inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him into His hand.”