Sir Hall Caine

“ At sunrise the following morning two men walked through Wythburn towards the hillock known as the Raise, down the long road that led to the south. The younger man had attained to the maturity of full manhood. Brawny and stalwart, with limbs that strode firmly over the ground; with an air of quiet and reposeful power; with a steadily poised head; with a full bass voice, soft, yet deep; with a face that had for its utmost beauty the beauty of virile strength and resolution, softened, perhaps, into tenderness of expression by washing in the waters of sorrow,—such, now, was Ralph Ray. ”

“ Ralph walked to the fire and turned over the expiring peat. It gave a fitful flicker. He took from his pocket the paper that had fallen from his father's breast, and looked long at it in the feeble light. It was all but the only evidence of the crime, and it must be destroyed. He put the paper to the light. Drawing it away, he paused and reflected. He thought of his stricken mother, and his resolve seemed fixed. He must burn this witness against his father; he must crush the black shadow of it in his hand. Could he but crush as easily the black shadow of impending doom! ”

“ Then there had come into Sim's eyes something that gave a meaning to his earlier words, “Ralph, you don't know what you ask.” Ah, did he not know now but too well? Ralph walked across the room with a sense as of a great burden of guilt weighing him down. The grave was not deep—oh, would it were, would it were! Would that the grave were the end of all! But no, it was as the old book said: when one dies, those who survive ask what he has left behind; the angel who bends above him asks what he has sent before. ”

“ Ralph spoke as one overawed by a sense of fatality. The world and its vicissitudes had left behind engraven on his heart a message and lesson, and it was not altogether a hopeful one. He saw that fate hung by a thread; that our lives are turned on the pivot of some mere chance; that, traced back to their source, all our joys and all our sorrows appear to come of some accident no more momentous than a word or a look. In solemn tones he seemed to say that there is a plague-spot of evil at the core of this world and this life, and that it infects everything. ”

“ Angus Ray lay there, his face downwards. The mighty frame was still and cold and stiff as the ice beneath it. The strong man had fallen from the saddle on to his head, and, dislocating his neck, had met with instant death. Close at hand were the marks of the horse's sliding hoofs. She had cast one of her shoes in the fall, and there it lay. Her knees, too, were still bleeding.
“Give me the lantern, Willy,” said Ralph, going down on his knees to feel the heart. He had laid his hand on it before, and knew too well it did not beat. But he opened the cloak and tried once more. ”

“ Naworth's halls are dead, Willy, Naworth's halls are dead; One lonely foot sounds on the keep, And that's the warder's tread.
The moon shone clearly; the tempest had lulled, and the silvery voice of the girl was all that could be heard above the distant rumble of the ghylls and the beat of Ralph's heavy footsteps. In a moment Rotha seemed to become conscious that her companion was sad as well as silent. ”

“ Ray Still sat gazing into the fire, hardly heeding the old weaver's garrulity, and letting him chatter on as he pleased. Occasionally she would look anxiously over her shoulder to ask Rotha if Ralph had got back, and on receiving answer that he had not yet been seen she would resume her position, and, with an absent look in her eyes, gaze back into the fire. When a dog's bark would be heard in the distance above the sound of the wind, she would break into consciousness afresh, and bid Rotha prepare the supper. ”

“ Bent and feeble, white as his smock, and with staring eyes, Sim continued to protest that God would not let them die at this time and in this place.
“If He does,” he said, “then it is not true what they have told us, that God watches over all!”
“What is that you are saying, old friend?” returned Ralph. “Death comes to every one. The black camel kneels at the gate of all. If it came to some here and some there, then it would be awful indeed.”
“But to die before our time is terrible, it is,” said Sim. ”

“ He had become at once an active and a brooding man. The shadow of a supernatural presence seemed to hang over everything. Tonight that shadow was blacker than before.
In the fulness of her joy Rotha had not marked the tone in which Ralph spoke when he gave her in a word all the new life that bounded in her veins. But that tone was one of sadness, and that word had seemed to drain away from veins of his some of the glad life that now pulsated in hers. Was it nothing that the outcast among men whom he alone, save this brave girl, had championed, had convinced him of his innocence? ”

“ Willy Ray had not merely his mother's features; he had her disposition also. He had the rounded neck and lissom limbs of a woman; he had a woman's complexion, and the light of a woman's look in his soft blue eyes. When the years gave a thin curly beard to his cheek they took nothing from its delicate comeliness. It was as if nature had down to the last moment meant Willy for a girl. He had been an apt scholar at school, and was one of the few persons in Wythburn having claims to education. Willy's elder brother, Ralph, more nearly resembled his father. ”

“ Truly, it was Betsy, the mare which they had lost on that fearful day at the Stye Head Pass. Her dread burden, the coffin containing the body of Angus Ray, was still strapped to her back. None had come nigh to her, or this must have been removed. She looked worn and tired as she rose now to her feet amid the snow. The old creature was docile enough this morning, and when Ralph patted her head, she seemed to know the hand that touched her.
She had crossed a range of mountains, and lived, no doubt, on the thin grass of the fells. She must have famished quickly had the snow fallen before. ”

“ It was to be just such a night—save for the frost and wind—as that fateful one on which Ralph and Rotha walked together from the Red Lion. How happy that night had seemed to her then to be—happy, at least, until the end! She had even sung under the moonlight. But her songs had been truer than she knew—terribly, horribly true.
One lonely foot sounds on the keep, And that's the warder's tread. ”

“ As for himself, it was a part of the curse that lay on him that her face should haunt his dreams, that her voice should come to him in his sleep, and that “Rotha, Rotha,” should rise in sobs to his lips in the weary watches of the night.
Yes, it must be as he had thought—God's hand was on him. Destiny had to work its own way. Why should he raise his feeble hands to prevent it? The end would be the end, whenever and wherever it might come. Why, then, should he stir?
Ralph had determined to go no farther. He would stay in Preston over the night, and set out again for the north at daybreak. ”

“ Ralph leads Rotha to a vacant chair near to where his mother sits.
“A blithe heart maks a blooming look,” says Mattha to the girl. Rotha's face deserves the compliment. To-day it looks as fresh as it is always beautiful. But there is something in it now that we have never before observed. The long dark lashes half hide and half reveal a tenderer light than has hitherto stolen into those deep brown eyes. ”

“ Ralph had rarely been heard to speak so bitterly. It was clear that opposition had gone far enough. Sim's watery eyes were never for an instant still. Full of a sickening apprehension, they cast furtive glances into every face. The poor creature seemed determined to gather up into his wretched breast the scorn that was blasting it. The turf on the hearth gave out a great heat, but the tailor shivered as with cold. ”

“ The people who had crowded round held their hands to their ears to shut out the fearful blasphemies. Garth, sobered somewhat by rage which was no longer assumed but real, pushed them aside and strode down the lane.
Rotha turned away from the crowd and walked towards Shoulthwaite. Before her, at fifty paces, the blacksmith tramped doggedly on, with head towards the ground. Drunk, mad, devilish as at this moment he might be, Rotha felt an impulse to overtake him. She knew not what power prompted her, or what idea or what hope. Never before had she felt an instinct drawing her to this man. ”

“ God has laid His hand on us all, Rotha; yes, and our hearts are open without disguise before Him—and before each other, too, I think.”
“Yes,” said Rotha. She scarcely knew what to say, or whither Ralph's words tended. She only knew that he was speaking as she had never heard him speak before. “Yes, Ralph,” she repeated.
“Perhaps, as I say, it's harder for me to ask than for you to answer, Rotha,” he continued, and the strong man looked into the girl's eyes with a world of tenderness. “Do you think you have any feeling for Willy—that is, more than the common? ”

“ They were rude sons and daughters of the hills who inhabited this mountain home two centuries ago. The country around them was alive with ghostly legend. They had seen the lights dance across Deer Garth Ghyll, and had heard the wail that came from Clark's Loup. They were not above trembling at the mention of these mysteries when the moon was flying across a darksome sky, when the wind moaned about the house, and they were gathered around the ingle nook. They had few channels of communication with the great world without. ”

“ The young girl had sat long by the old dame overnight, holding her hand and speaking softly to her between the outbursts of her own grief. She had whispered something about brave sons who would yet be her great stay, and then the comforter herself had needed comfort and her voice of solace had been stilled. When the daylight came in at the covered windows, Rotha rose up unrefreshed; but with a resolute heart she set herself to the duties that had dropped so unexpectedly upon her. She put the spinning-wheel into the neuk window-stand and the woo-wheel against the wall. ”

“ Ralph was speaking to the companion who rode by his side; but in fact he seemed to be addressing himself.
“And to see a man buy a reprieve from Death!” he continued. “Never do that—never? Did you ever think of it, Sim, that what happens is always the best?”
“It scarce looks like it, Ralph; that it don't.”
“Then it's because you don't look long enough. In the end, it is always the best that happens. Truth and the right are the last on the field; it always has been so, and always will be; it only needs that you should wait to the close of the battle to see that.” ”

“ Following him will be the rule o' thumb,” said Sim.
“You said he took the road over the Raise,” said Rotha. “He'll not go far, depend upon that. The horse has not been caught. Ralph is among the mountains yet, take my word for it, father.”
“It's bad weather to trapes the fells, Rotha. The ground is all slush and sladderment.”
“So it is, so it is; and you're grown weak, father. I'll go myself. Liza Branthwaite will come here and fill my place.”
“No, no, I'll go; yes, that I will,” said Sim. Rotha's ardor of soul had conquered her father's apprehension of failure. ”