The old church at Duke’s Hampton, a fine old structure, built in the latter part of the thirteenth century, stood calm and still upon its eminence that dark night. The older folks at the village said it was terribly haunted “arter dark,” and the younger believed. Strange sights and sounds were said to have been seen and heard. Ghostly forms glided on silent wing round the tower and swept low amongst the tombs, uttering weird shrieks. Curious mutterings and croaks were heard on high among the corbels and demoniacal gargoyles, the holes in the tower among the ivy, and low moans often proceeded from the shuttered windows where the big bells hung.

All true, for down there in leafy Warwickshire there were plenty of owls, daws, starlings, and pigeons to make the old ivy-clothed building a bird sanctuary where they were never touched. They seemed to belong to “my church;” to Moredock; and he never took nest or destroyed their young.

On the night when Dally Watlock took upon herself to watch, high up in the rood-loft, steps approached the church from the back, about half an hour later, and a dark figure entered the churchyard, to walk cautiously and silently up towards the outer door of the vestry.

As it silently crossed the yard, a head slowly appeared above the wall, and watched the tall dark figure for a few minutes, as it seemed to glide in and out among the tombstones, and then fade completely away.

The watcher held on by the churchyard wall for a few minutes, rigid and paralysed. There was a faint sound of breathing heard, but it was catching and spasmodic, as if the watcher were in pain. But at last, after gazing in the direction where the dark figure had disappeared, with starting eyes, and a sensation on the top of the head as if the cap there was being softly lifted, the gentleman of inquiring mind tried to wrench his hands from where they clutched the top of the wall.

It was a momentary act, resulting in his grasping the coping-stone more tightly, and uttering the words:

“Ha’ mussy upon us!” For Joe Chegg felt his legs give way at the knees, and that he was bathed in a cold perspiration.

“If I can only get back safe home again,” he moaned to himself, “never no more – never no more!”

He felt that he had gazed for the first time at one of the peripatetic horrors of which he had heard since he was a child, and in which he had always religiously believed. In fact, he would never have ventured to the churchyard at midnight had he not been moved by one of the strongest passions of our nature. He had gone there most fully convinced that somewhere about he would encounter the gentleman who met Dally Watlock; and to emphasise their meeting, he had brought his smallest mallet from his tool-basket, as being a handy kind of tool.

But he had not reckoned upon seeing a tall dark figure draped in a long black cloak glide silently by him, growing taller and taller as it disappeared, leaving him with his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth, and without the wit to consider that where he stood in the meadow he was in the dry ditch, that the churchyard wall formed a kind of haha at that spot by the rise of the earth resulting from centuries of interments; and that, in addition, there was a steep slope up to the church, sufficient to make any one standing by the vestry door ten feet above his head.

But Joe Chegg would not have believed these simple physical facts had they been explained to him. He had seen a veritable spirit that might mean his own “fetch.” Whether or no, he wanted to go home and keep his own counsel, mentally vowing – as he at last wrenched himself away, and ran as hard as he could over the dewy grass – that, come what might, he would, if he were spared, never run such a risk again.

He was in the act of dragging himself away, thankful that he was on the meadow-side of the wall, when a low muttering moan rose upon the night air, from the direction in which the monstrous figure had disappeared; and that moan acted as a spur to the frightened man.

It was simple enough, as simple as the explanation of other supernatural sounds, for as the dark figure stood close to the vestry door for a few moments and at last uttered an impatient “tut-tut-tut,” there was a grumbling, muttering sound from a horizontal stone, and Moredock rose, saying in a low voice:

“All right, doctor – all right. I was half asleep, and didn’t hear you come.”

The next moment they had entered the Candlish vault, and the door was closed, Moredock directly after proceeding to strike a match.

“How much longer’s this a-going on?” he grumbled.

“Till I have finished,” said the doctor sternly; but there was a strange intonation of the voice – a peculiar manner – which made the sexton, as he struck the light and held it to the candle in his lanthorn, gaze sharply at the speaker.

“All right, doctor. I don’t grumble; you’ll give me my dose again – seems to settle and comfort a man while he’s waiting.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said North hastily.

“You can rouse me up if I drop off to sleep, doctor. Couldn’t get my nap i’ the chair ’safternoon, and it makes a man a bit drowsy.”

North lit his lamp, which stood ready upon the stone table, and the yellow light filled the grim place with its soft glow once more – a pleasantly subdued light which displayed the surrounding niches and the empty coffin of the late squire, and shone softly upon gilt plate, handle, and tarnished nail, but lay in an intense ring of brightness upon the table that bore it and the sawdust around.

The customary portion from the flask was poured out, and swallowed by the old sexton with a satisfied smack of the lips before he set down the glass upon a coffin-lid.

“Ha! that’s fine, doctor,” he said with a loud laugh, as his countenance puckered into a goblin grin. “Cordial that is. Goes down into a man’s toes and the tips of his fingers, and makes his heart beat. You’re a clever one, doctor – a clever one, that you are. Rouse me up if you want me. I may go to sleep again – I may go to sleep.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll call you,” said North, as the old man seated himself once more in his corner with head against the wall, while before the doctor had settled the shade of his lamp to his satisfaction, a stertorous snore came from Moredock’s corner, accompanied at intervals by a low moaning gasp.

“How easy to produce death!” said North, in a low voice. “Science gives us the power to cause that and sleep, which is its semblance, at our will. Why should it be more difficult to produce life?”

“How many nights is this?” he continued. “Ten, and I seem no nearer – nay, further away, for – ah!” he ejaculated savagely, “there is that wretched coward shrinking again.”

He shivered and looked hastily round as he drew in his breath hard and with a curious catch.

“Good heavens! of what am I afraid? The first amputator, the first explorer into Nature’s hidden paths, where she guards her secrets so religiously – they only felt the same. Have I gone so far only to hesitate to go further?”

He stood shrinking, with his hand clutching the white cloth spread over the table, and his eyes fixed on vacancy.

“Am I – an experienced medical man – to be frightened by a shadow? I say that there is nothing wrong in my researches,” he cried passionately, as if addressing some one in the corner of the vault. “It is for the benefit of posterity. My experiments upon this vile body here are right.

“And yet I feel as if I cannot go further,” he muttered, with the same abject shiver attacking him again; “as if I dared not – as if I must pause, and I have learned so much. I dare not! It is as if the hand of one’s guardian angel were laid upon my breast, and a voice whispered – ‘Rash man, pause before it is too late!’”

He caught at the nearest object for support, for he was weak with excitement, and his face looked ghastly in the gloom, as he stood there trembling till he realised what he, the living, had seized to sustain him – a coffin handle – and snatched his fingers away with a cry of horror, to shrink back and rest against the further side of the vault, but only to start away again, for his shoulder was against another coffin.

He glanced at Moredock, but the old man was sleeping heavily, and once more he looked wildly round the vault.

“I cannot go on,” he groaned; “it is too horrible. There is a terror beyond that dark veil which seems to hold me back. I’ll wake him up. This night shall end it all, and I’ll rest in peace, contented with what I know. I dare go no further.”

He drew a long breath, as if relieved, and felt stimulated by his thoughts. It was all so simple to try and leave everything as nearly as possible in its old state, generously recompense the old sexton, and return to his regular course. The proceedings of the past would be the joint secret of Moredock and himself.

“I’ve done,” he said. “I’ll be satisfied. It is too horrible to go on.”

He crossed to the old man, who was now sleeping quite peacefully, and had raised his hand to shake him and bid him rise and help, but his hand stopped within a few inches of the old sexton’s shoulder, and he stepped back with an ejaculation full of anger.

“Coward! idiot!” he exclaimed. “That ignorant old boor sleeps as calmly as a child among these grisly relics of mortality, and you, enlightened by science, educated, a seeker after wisdom, shrink and shiver and dare do no more.

“No,” he added, after a pause; “it is too horrible. There is a something holds me back.

“And fame – the praise of men? And love? The kisses of Leo? Her bright looks – her pride in the man she will call husband? Horace North, are you going mad? Pause? Now? When there is triumph waiting, and a little further research will teach me all I want – maybe give me the great success?

“No; not if fifty guardian angels barred my way. I will win now in spite of all.”

The coward fit of shrinking had gone, and, with a laugh full of contempt for himself, he took a step to the table and snatched the white cloth from the great stone slab.

Volume Two – Chapter Ten.
A Friendly Visit

A week had passed since Horace North’s straggle with the strange fits of repugnance and dread that had assailed him on his researches: six nights, during each of which he had battled with the same feelings and mastered, and gone on, with Moredock revelling in his opiate-produced sleep in the corner.

Night after night the old man slept in that vault for hours, among the remains of the Candlishes whom he had robbed, and enjoying a voluptuous pleasure in his sleep, which made him the doctor’s willing servant, whose dread was lest the visits to the mausoleum should come to an end.

But these nightly visits were not without their effects, and these intense studies could not be carried on without leaving their traces on the man.

Mrs Berens was taken ill, and the doctor was called in.

In her lonely widowed state, with nothing but her money, her dress, her mirror, and the visits and gossip of Duke’s Hampton to amuse her, thirsting the while for the communings of a kindred spirit who would tell her she was far too young yet to give up thoughts of love, Mrs Berens felt that she must have some relaxation, and she took it in the form of fits of illness of the body and ditto ditto of the mind.

For the former she called in Dr North, and told her pains.

For the latter, the Reverend Hartley Salis, to whom she recounted her doubts, her sorrows, and her sufferings of mind; and in each case she felt better, though she did not take the medicine of the one nor follow out the precepts of the other.

It was very wrong, no doubt, but it was very natural; and Mrs Berens, not middle-aged, and plump, and pleasing, and anxious to please, was very full of human nature.

There was such satisfaction, too, in having her hand held by the doctor. So there was, too, when it was grasped at coming, and again at leaving, by bluff, manly Parson Salis; but they neither of them proposed, or went a step further than to be gently courteous and kind to the loving and lovable weak woman, who longed to empty the urn of her affection upon either head.

And now poor Mrs Berens was in sad trouble.

“I know it,” she sobbed to herself, after a visit from the doctor. “Mary Salis will not confess, and Leo always holds one off; but he does love Leo, and she is holding him in her wicked chains, like one of those terrible witches we read about; and, poor dear man, she is breaking his heart. I’ve tried so hard to wean him from that dreadful love of a bad, base girl, and the more I try the worse he is.”

Mrs Berens sobbed till her eyes ached, and she bathed them with eau-de-cologne and water.

“How dare I say she is bad and base?” she said half aloud, speaking to herself in the glass, as her handsome, large, blue swimming eyes looked appealingly at her; “because I know it. I’m sure of it. I can always feel it. I’m weak and foolish, but I should love him and cherish him, while she is trifling with him – I’m sure – and breaking his heart.

“Oh, poor man, poor man!” she sighed; “how worn out and ill he looks! What shall I do? What shall I do?”

Mrs Berens made up her mind what she would do. She could not send for the curate. She was not sufficiently ill for that.

“And it would look so.”

She could not go and see him, for that would also “look so.” Leo detested her, she knew, quite as much as she detested Leo, whom she declared to be so horribly young. But she could go and see poor Mary; and after well bathing her eyes, she stripped her little conservatory to get a good bunch of flowers for the invalid, and then went across to the Rectory.

Leo was out for a ride, to Mrs Berens’ great delight.

“Master’s in his study over his sermon, ma’am,” said Dally Watlock; “but Miss Mary’s in, ma’am.”

“Yes, Dally, it is Miss Mary I want to see,” sighed Mrs Berens; and then, as much out of genuine kindness as with the idea of making a friend at the Rectory: “How pretty, and young, and well you do look, Dally!”

“Thank ye, ma’am,” said Dally, with a distant bob, but gratified all the same.

“Do you know, Dally, I’ve got a silk dress, a pale red, that would make up so nicely for you? It isn’t old, but I shall not wear it any more.”

Daily’s eyes sparkled at pale red silk.

“It wouldn’t fit you,” continued the widow, “but you could make it up nicely with your clever little fingers;” and she compared her own redundant charms with the trim, tight little figure of the maid.

“Thank ye, ma’am. May I come for it?”

“Yes, Dally, do. Now show me in to Miss Mary.”

Dally ushered in the widow, and then stood in the passage thinking.

“I wouldn’t go for it, that I wouldn’t, if I was quite sure. I don’t want to wear her old dresses. Nice thing for a lady who’s going to have a title and live up at the Hall to have to wear somebody else’s old silk frocks.

“I think I’ll go, though,” said Dally. “No, I won’t, for it’s coming to a nice blow up for some one I know, and I’ll let ’em all see.”

“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs Berens, entering the room, flower-bearing, and bending down over the invalid with a good deal of gushing sentiment, but plenty of genuine affection.

“It’s very good of you to come, Mrs Berens,” cried Mary, flushing. “And the flowers – for me?”

“For you? Yes,” said the widow, plumping down on her knees by Mary’s couch, and playfully laying the bouquet upon Mary’s bosom, and holding it there beneath her chin. “Now it’s perfect. It only wanted your sweet rose of a face added to it. My dear, what an angel’s face you have!”

“Mrs Berens!” cried Mary, flushing more deeply, half annoyed, half amused at her visitor’s flattering words; but there was no feeling anything but pleasure at the affectionate kiss pressed upon her lips, and the tender touches of the two well-gloved hands.

“There, I’ve come to have a quiet chat with you,” said the widow. “I ought to have been in before, but I have been so unwell, my dear; obliged to send for Dr North.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs Berens,” said Mary, laying her hand in those of the widow.

“I knew you would be, dear; and, oh, I have been so poorly.”

“But you are better now?” said Mary kindly.

“No, no, my dear. I’m a poor, weak, unhappy woman, and – oh! I ought to be ashamed of myself, that I ought, to go on like that when there you are so ill and yet so patient that one never hears a murmur escape your lips.”

“I don’t think I’m very ill, Mrs Berens.”

“Then I do, my dear; and I shall come and see you more often, for you’ve done me no end of good. It’s like a lesson to me, and I’ll never complain any more.”

“That’s right,” said Mary, smiling. “Do come oftener; I’m very much alone. We will not talk about our ailments,” she added with a smile.

“No, of course not; but I have been very poorly, dear, and I sent for Dr North. Do you take any interest in Dr North?”

Mrs Berens was not subtle enough of intellect to note the change in Mary’s countenance. At first there was a faint flush; then a waxen pallor; but she mastered her emotion, though her heart beat heavily as she said:

“Of course. He was very good and kind to me all through my illness.”

“Yes, poor man – poor, dear man!” sighed the widow. “And of course Mr Salis likes him very much?”

“Yes; they are very warm friends,” said Mary quietly.

“Then do – do pray talk to your brother,” cried Mrs Berens, with pathetic eagerness.

“No, no, Mrs Berens,” said a bluff, deep voice. “I’m always with my sisters, and they talk to me too much.”

“Oh, Mr Salis! You shouldn’t, you know,” cried the widow, all of a flutter. “You shouldn’t come in so suddenly.”

“Why, I only came in to say ‘how do?’” replied Salis pleasantly, as he shook hands. “There, sit down again, and tell me what I am to be talked to about.”

“Oh, really, Mr Salis, I – I – I was only going to say, pray talk to or see to poor Dr North. I’m afraid he’s very far from well.”

“So am I,” cried Salis. “I have just been telling him so.”

“He – he has been here, then – just now?”

“Not exactly just now; I mean this morning. You noticed, then, that he seemed ill and over-excited?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Mrs Berens, as Mary tried to lie back perfectly calm, but with her eyes glancing rapidly from one to the other, and her trembling fingers telling the agitation from which she suffered. “I was so poorly that I sent for him, and he quite startled me: his manner was so strange and abrupt. I’m sure he’s being worried over something.”

“Studies too hard,” said Salis quietly. “He will do it, and advice is of no avail. Mrs Milt tells me that he sits up at night. Doctors are like clergymen, I’m afraid, Mrs Berens: they are fond of teaching and curing other people, but they neglect themselves.”

“There, I hope you will give him a good talking to, Mr Salis,” said the widow, rising to go; “for I should really not like to ask him to see me again until he is better. He seemed to be so wild and eccentric: he quite startled me.”

“Just for the sake of saying something, Mary,” said the curate as soon as they were alone; and, in answer to Mary’s inquiring eyes, “Horace has made up his mind to distinguish himself for Leo’s sake, and, heigho! my dear, things seem to be very awkward, and I don’t know how to set them right.”

Volume Two – Chapter Eleven.
An Interruption

Other people, too, noticed the doctor’s strangely intent manner, as he went hurriedly about among his patients every morning, and then returned to his study to pore over sundry manuscript notes and refer to certain books.

Mrs Milt had to almost insist upon his taking his meals, for on two occasions his dinner had gone out untasted, and she had found him sitting, with his head resting upon his hands, deep in thought.

He started upon being spoken to, and seemed once more himself; but as soon as he was alone again, he relapsed into another fit of abstraction.

A few more days passed, and his task was telling upon him terribly; but he persevered, for each night he felt that he was getting nearer to success.

“I shall succeed,” he said to himself, with a wild excitability of manner that was startling; but he was alone when he said these words, and no one heard them.

“Arn’t it a very long experiment, doctor?” said Moredock, one night, looking at the doctor seriously, and rubbing his cheek slowly.

“Yes. It is taking me longer than I thought, but I shall soon finish now.”

“Glad o’ that,” said the old man drily; “because a pitcher as goes too often to the well, doctor, gets broke at last.”

“What do you mean?”

“Naught, only we might be found out.”

“Nonsense!” said the doctor uneasily. “Nobody is likely to be about except any person should be ill, and I know exactly who is likely to want the doctor by night.”

“Ah, well, let’s be careful, doctor, for it would be awkward for both if we was to be found out.”

“Pish! Who would find us out, man?”

“Well, say parson.”

“Absurd! He is in bed, and sound asleep. There, take your glass; I want to begin.”

“Nay,” said the old man, looking at the rich liqueur North poured out for him, “I don’t think I’ll have no drop to-night.”

“Nonsense, man!” said North, holding out the glass, at which the old man gazed longingly. But he shook his head and thrust it away.

“Nay, doctor; I’m going to keep watch to-night.”

“Keep watch, man?” said North, who seemed staggered at this determination.

“Yes, doctor, I’m going to keep watch. I can’t afford to have aught go wrong, if you can. You get on with your work, and I’ll be on the look-out.”

“Here?”

“Nay, nay. I’ll hang about outside.”

“Yes, do,” said North, who seemed relieved; and he turned down the lamp to let Moredock out.

“I shall give three taps on the door, doctor, when I come back,” whispered the old man. “You go on just as if I was here; but when I tap, you turn down the light again, and let me in. Don’t s’pose I shall see anybody, but I must take care.”

“Yes, do,” said North hurriedly; and, as the old man passed out, he closed the door after him and made it fast.

“It would have been like checking my experiment now I am so near success,” he said to himself, as, now quite alone, he once more turned up the shaded lamp, when the warm yellow glow shone out full upon the recumbent figure, carefully draped with the great white sheet.

Horace North stood bending over the subject of his ghastly experiment, the remains of Luke Candlish lying apparently unchanged, and as if decay had been completely arrested.

There was a strange odour of chemicals in the place, and, as the doctor removed the cloth, it was to uncover, just as they had been left on the previous night, a powerful galvanic battery, syringes, and other surgical paraphernalia.

For the next hour the doctor continued his labours, feeling more and more assured that he should triumph; and, as he toiled on, he talked rapidly to himself of the apparently complete arrest of decay, and the perfectly calm manner in which his subject lay, as it were, placidly waiting for the awakening which North felt, in his excitement, absolutely sure would come.

“It is so near now that I have but to vitalise and obtain positive proof that, when carried to its full extent, I have performed what is almost a miracle, and proved that what I worked out in theory is possible in practice.”

He stood gazing down at the calm, cold face, with its closed eyes, hesitating, not from the horror that had half paralysed him before, but from dread lest, now he had gone so far that he could apply his final test, he should be disappointed.

His head burned, his pulses throbbed heavily, and his hesitation increased.

Rousing himself at last, he laid his hand upon the icy-cold forehead before him, the contact sending a chill through his frame; but he did not notice it.

“Why do I stop?” he said. “It only wants this. I am alone, and no better opportunity could come. Oh, if I had but the aiding hand of that old savant, how easy it would be!”

This brought back the scene in the theatre – the lecture, the applause; and his heart beat more rapidly in anticipation of his grand triumph when he could demonstrate this, the greatest surgical feat that had ever been performed.

“And yet I hesitate,” he exclaimed excitedly; “hesitate when I have but to plunge boldly to succeed.”

“And I will,” he said firmly, after a pause.

The scene which followed was weird and horrible, had there been an onlooker; to North it had all the fascination of an intense scientific experiment. For he had arrived at the pitch when, according to his theory, he had but to make the warm living blood pass from his own veins, as in a case of transfusion, to prove that his studies bore the fruit of success.

The preliminaries were all arranged, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, North took a bright, keen lancet from its case, but only to let it fall back, starting violently, for he was, as it were, snatched back from his scientific dream by a faint rap upon the door of the great vault, and this was followed directly after by two more.

North rapidly replaced the great sheet, and turned down the light before going softly to the entry.

“Well?” he said harshly; “returned?”

“Hist!” whispered the old sexton. “Out here!”

He caught the doctor’s hand and drew him out from the entry of the vault to stand within the iron railings.

“Why have – ”

“Hist!” whispered the old man again. “Come with me.”

North hesitated again, but yielded to his companion and followed him softly right round the church to the belfry door, which yielded to the old man’s touch.

“What does this mean?” said the doctor angrily. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Come and see,” whispered the old man so earnestly that North hesitated no longer, but followed him wonderingly into the church, and along the matting-covered aisle, to the old oak screen, where Moredock paused and caught his arm.

“Some one watching?” whispered North, as they stood together in the darkness; “in yonder?”

For the old man had indicated the vestry door with his outstretched hand.

It seemed strange, for a minute before they had been beside the outer door of the vestry, and now he had been brought in to stand by the inner door in the chancel.

“You’re wanted there,” whispered Moredock – “yonder!”

“Watchers?”

“You’re wanted there, doctor,” whispered the old man. “Go in and see.”

The silence was painful in the extreme, as North stood wondering there, but the next moment, feeling attracted by he knew not what desire to see who was within there face to face, he took a couple of steps forward to the old oak door, when a faint whispering seemed to come from the other side, followed by a low cough, which sent the blood surging to his brain.

There was no hesitation now, for, half-mad with excitement and the strange passion that seemed for the moment to stifle him, he seized the great latch, which snapped loudly as he threw it up, and strode into the little stone-walled room.