‘I felt,’ said she, ’that something awful had happened.  And it affects yourself, Henry?’

‘It affects myself.’

‘And very deeply?’

‘Very deeply, Winnie.’

Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment scroll, I said, ‘It has relation to these.’

‘That I felt,’ said she; ’how could it be otherwise?  Oh, the miscreant!  I curse him; I curse him!’

‘Winifred,’ I said, ’between me and this casket, and the cross mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link.  The cross is an amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill.  It has been disturbed; it has been stolen from my father’s grave, and there is but one way of setting right that disturbance.  To avert unspeakable calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is demanded.’

’Henry, you terrify me to death.  What is the sacrifice?  Oh God!  Oh God!’

‘My father’s son must die, Winnie.’

She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, ’I fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must even take the calamity and bear it; for I don’t mean my Henry to die, let me assure both families of that.’

’Ah! but, Winnie, I am under a solemn oath and pledge to bear this penalty; and we part to-night, That shriek which so appalled you—­’

‘Well, well, the shriek?’ said she, in a frenzy of impatience.

I made no answer, but she answered herself.

‘That shriek was a call to you,’ she cried, and then burst into a passion of tears.  ‘It cannot be,’ she said.  ’It cannot and shall not be; God is too good to suffer it,’ Then she fixed her eyes upon me, and sobbed:  ’Ah, it is true!  I feel it is all true!  Yes, they are calling you, and that is why my soul answered the call.  Ah, when I saw you just now lift your head from my breast with a face grey and wizened as an old man’s—­when I saw you look at me, I knew that something dreadful had happened.  Oh, I knew, I knew! but I thought it had happened to me.  The love and pity in your eyes when you opened them upon me made me think it was my trouble, and not yours, that disturbed you.  And now I know it is yours, and you are going to die!  They are calling you.  Yes, you are going to let the tide drown you!  Oh, my love my love!’ and her grief was so acute that I knew not at first whether in this I had done well after all.

‘Winifred,’ I said, ’you must bear this.  I have always been ready to take death when it should come.  I have at least had one blessed time with Winifred on the sands—­Winifred the beloved and beautiful girl—­one night, as the crown to the happy days that have been mine with Winifred the beloved and beautiful child.  And that night, as we were walking by the sea, it seemed to me that such happiness as was ours can come but once—­that never again could there be a night equal to that.’