"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 his mind was deranged. There was no