I hesitated to become a party to such an undertaking as this.  It savoured of superstition, I thought.  Now, having at that very time abandoned all the superstitions and all the mystical readings of the universe which as a child I had inherited from ancestors, Romany and English, having at that very time begun to take a delight in the wonderful revelations of modern science, my attitude towards superstition—­towards all super-naturalism—­oscillated between anger and simple contempt.

‘But,’ I said, ’you surely will not have this beautiful old cross buried?’ And as I looked at it, and the light fell upon it, there came from it strange flashes of fire, showing with what extraordinary skill the rubies and diamonds had been adjusted so that their facets should catch and concentrate the rays of the moon.

‘Yes,’ he said, taking the cross again in his hand and fondling it passionately, ‘it must never be possessed by any one after me.’

‘But it might be stolen, father—­stolen from your coffin.’

‘That would indeed he a disaster,’ he said with a shudder.  Then a look of deadly vengeance overspread his face and brought out all its Romany characteristics as he said:  ’But with it there will be buried a curse written in Hebrew and English—­a curse upon the despoiler, which will frighten off any thief who is in his senses.’

And he showed me a large parchment scroll, folded exactly like a title-deed, with the following curse and two verses from the 109th Psalm written upon it in Hebrew and English.  The English version was carefully printed by himself in large letters:—­

’He who shall violate this tomb.—­he who shall steal this amulet, hallowed as a love-token between me and my dead wife,—­he who shall dare to lay a sacrilegious hand upon this cross, stands cursed by God. cursed by love, and cursed by me.  Philip Aylwin, lying here.

“Let there be no man to pity him, nor to have compassion upon his fatherless children....  Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread; let them seek it also out of desolate places.”  Psalm cix.  So saith the Lord.  Amen.’

‘I have printed the English version in large letters,’ he said, ’so that any would-be despoiler must see it and read it at once by the dimmest lantern light.’

‘But, father,’ I said, ’is it possible that you, an educated man, really believe in the efficacy of a curse?’

’If the curse comes straight from the heart’s core of a man, as this curse comes from mine, Hal, how can it fail to operate by the mere force of will?  The curse of a man who loved as I love upon the wretch who should violate a love-token so sacred as this—­why, the disembodied spirits of all who have loved and suffered would combine to execute it!’

‘Spirits!’ I said.  ’Really, father, in times like these to talk of spirits!’