A stretcher was brought, and the body of Sir Norman was carried back to the Tower. The manner of his death was a mystery, and one which was not for many years fully explained. His mare, still saddled and bridled, was found in her stable, whither she had evidently made her way after the catastrophe to her rider had happened. But of what nature had been that catastrophe? It was found, upon examination, that the Baronet's neck had been dislocated, which of course amply accounted for the fact of his death, though not for anything beyond that. Some opined that his horse must have taken fright during the storm, and rushing beneath the Oak had either thrown the Baronet there, or he had been swept off his saddle by a branch of the tree. This latter hypothesis seemed plausible enough, though there were still those three terrible screams left uninterpreted. The screams, however, might have been comfortably ignored, had it not been for a certain appalling sign of violence which had been left upon the person of the dead man himself, and the significance of which, if it could not be fathomed, it was equally impossible to do away with. The right hand, from the wrist to the finger-ends, was stripped of the skin, and in parts even of the flesh: the bone of the thumb was crushed, and the wrist was wrenched out of joint. These indications--so far as the awe-stricken senses of the beholders were able to apprehend them--seemed to show that the Baronet's hand must have been caught in a grasp of superhuman strength; and that in tearing it free with the energy of desperation, he had left part of its substance behind. Whose hand, then, had gripped his own so hard? and for what purpose? any answer to such questions must evidently be purely conjectural. It was indeed a grisly problem to ponder over, and one which nervous people would rather discuss with cronies in broad daylight than with their own minds in the small hours of the night. Especially would this be the case after certain wiseacres had intimated their opinion that the marks left upon Sir Norman's hand had been made by no other talons than those of his Satanic majesty; who must have been strangely impressed with the idea that the Baronet was his property--if firmness of grasp is to be taken as any criterion of conviction of ownership. On the other hand, it was to be said in the Baronet's favour that he had, after all, succeeded in wrenching himself loose; but since a rough comparison of times proved that he must have died a few minutes after this escape, the doubt suggested itself whether, in his disembodied state, Satan might not have proved too strong for him. Might it not be, in fact, that although the fleshly hand had been freed, the spiritual one had remained in the Arch-Enemy's gripe? Three screams of horror and agony had been heard, but not so much as a single shout of triumph and victory. Upon the whole, therefore, the preponderance of contemporary