end to end
of the Belvidere. The moon was, by this time, low in the heavens; but
her mild mysterious light still streamed over the roof of the house and
the high heathy ground round it. I looked attentively at Romayne. He was
deadly pale; his hand shook as it rested on my arm--and that was all.
Neither in look nor manner did he betray the faintest sign of mental
derangement. He had perhaps needlessly alarmed the faithful old servant
by something that he had said or done. I determined to clear up that
doubt immediately.

"You left the table very suddenly," I said. "Did you feel ill?"

"Not ill," he replied. "I was frightened. Look at me--I'm frightened
still."

"What do you mean?"

Instead of answering, he repeated the strange question which he had put
to me downstairs.

"Do you call it a quiet night?"

Considering the time of year, and the exposed situation of the house,
the night was almost preternaturally quiet. Throughout the vast open
country all round us, not even a breath of air could be heard. The
night-birds were away, or were silent at the time. But one sound was
audible, when we stood still and listened--the cool quiet bubble of a
little stream, lost to view in the valley-ground to the south.

"I have told you already," I said. "So still a night I never remember on
this Yorkshire moor."

He laid one hand heavily on my shoulder. "What did the poor boy say of
me, whose brother I killed?" he asked. "What words did we hear through
the dripping darkness of the mist?"

"I won't encourage you to think of them. I refuse to repeat the words."

He pointed over the northward parapet.

"It doesn't matter whether you accept or refuse," he said, "I hear the
boy at this moment--there!"

He repeated the horrid words--marking the pauses in the utterance of
them with his finger, as if they were sounds that he heard:

"Assassin! Assassin! where are you?"

"Good God!" I cried. "You don't mean that you really _hear_ the voice?"

"Do you hear what I say? I hear the boy as plainly as you hear me. The
voice screams at me through the clear moonlight, as it screamed at me
through the sea-fog. Again and again. It's all round the house. _That_
way now, where the light just touches on the tops of the heather. Tell
the servants to have the horses ready the first thing in the morning. We
leave Vange Abbey to-morrow."

These were wild words. If he had spoken them wildly, I might have shared
the butler's conclusion that h