My mother knew what had been my father’s instructions to me, and was desirous that they should be fulfilled, though she scorned the superstition.  She and I placed the casket and the scroll hearing the written curse upon it beneath my father’s head, and hung the chain of the amulet around his neck, so that the cross lay with the jewels uppermost upon his breast.  Then the undertakers were called in to screw down the coffin in my presence.  My mother afterwards called me to her room, and told me that she was much troubled about the cross.  The amulet being of great value, my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley had tried to dissuade her from carrying into execution what he called ‘the absurd whim of a mystic’; but my mother urged my promise, and there had been warm words between them, as my mother told me—­adding, however, ’and the worst of it is, that scamp Wynne, whom your uncle introduced into this house without my knowledge or sanction, was passing the door while your uncle was talking, and if he did not hear every word about the jewelled cross, drink must have stupefied him indeed. He is my only fear in connection with the jewels.’  Her dislike of Wynne had made her forget for the moment the effect her words must have upon me.

‘Mother,’ I said, ’your persistent prejudice and injustice towards this man astonish me.  Wynne, though poor and degraded now, is a gentleman born, and is no more likely to violate a tomb than the best Aylwin that ever lived.’

I will not dwell upon the scene at the funeral.  I saw my father’s coffin placed in the crypt that spread beneath the deserted church.  It was by the earnest wish of my father that he was buried in a church already deserted because the grip of the resistless sea was upon it.  At this very time a very large slice of the cliff behind the church was pronounced dangerous, and I perceived that new rails were lying on the grass ready to be fixed up, further inland than ever.

VII

My mother retired to her room immediately on our return to the house.  My uncle stayed till just before dinner, and then left.  I seemed to be alone in a deserted house, so still were the servants, so quiet seemed everything.  But now what was this sense of undefined dread that came upon me and would not let me rest?  Why did I move from room to room? and what was goading me?  Something was stirring like a blind creature across my brain, and it was too hideous to confront.  Why should I confront it?  Why scare one’s soul and lacerate one’s heart at every dark fear that peeps through the door of imagination, when experience teaches us that out of every hundred such dark fears ninety-nine are sure to turn out mere magic-lantern bogies?

The evening wore on, and yet I would not face this phantom fear, though it refused to quit me.

The servants went to bed quite early that night, and when the butler came to ask me if I should ‘want anything more,’ I said ’only a candle,’ and went up to my bedroom.