The fact that he never saw his wife buried, by the way, may account for the notion which constantly possessed him that she was still in some shape or other (a very appalling one, seemingly) above ground. In other words, the man was haunted for the remainder of his days by a spectre; possibly by more than one: but that is a point not easy to determine, since he was the only person to whom it or they were visible. He contracted a habit of betaking himself at certain hours to that particular point on the cliff where the body of Lady Kildhurm had been found: being thereto impelled, we may suppose, not because the place was agreeable to him--for it is probable that no place in the world was less so--but by that perverse horror which is known by the name of fascination, and which drives the fluttering sparrow into the open jaws of the snake. Having regard to all these eccentricities of his, it is not surprising that he came to be considered as a man accursed--incapable of being of use to any human creature, and therefore to be avoided of all. It must be recollected that this was the beginning of the seventeenth century; nobody allows himself to fall into delusions nowadays. And it will be easy for the philosophers of our enlightened age to account for Sir Brian's mania, and his notions about phantoms, as a result of that astounding buffet on the head which he received from him of the Red Beard; a buffet rude enough, certainly, to have disorganised brains stronger than those of the Knight of Kildhurm. There remains, it is true, the question why such a cause should be followed by such an effect; but to insist upon this would be, perhaps, but the refinement of idle curiosity. The violent extinction of these two lives--of Lady Kildhurm's and of him of the Red Beard--was suffered to pass without legal inquiries, or at all events without legal penalties. The north of England, at this period, was not in a particularly peaceful or settled condition; and, what is more to the purpose, the red-bearded man was known to have been ardently attached to the Roman Catholic religion; and he was doubtless suspected by some of having affiliations with the authors of the Gunpowder Treason. No one, of course, who set any value upon the security of his own vertebra, would care to espouse the cause of a person of whom such things could be said, especially after taking into consideration the fact that the person was no longer alive. As for Lady Kildhurm, if it were true that she had carried on an intrigue with a traitor and conspirator, what more probable and easy to be believed than that she should have sympathised with his political and religious views into the bargain? For when women give themselves up to love, it is their happiness to give themselves without reservation of soul, mind, or body. Let Lady Kildhurm and her lover, therefore, if they needed avenging, manage the matter for themselves, and in their own way.