With an oath old Wanlock staggered from his bed in time to save himself, but the Manor-house was doomed—at dawn the bitter smell of woody ashes blew across the valley. From the shabby lodge-house midway in the avenue he looked astonished at the girdling hills, to see them all so steadfast and indifferent: the sun came up and sailed across the heavens, heedless of the smouldering space among the pines, where turret and tower more lofty than themselves had seemed, a day ago, eternal. The rat squeaked as it burrowed for a new home under fallen lintels; the raven croaked upon the cooling hearth. And night came down on these charred relics, swiftly—night, the old conquering rider, ally of despair! It appeared to Wanlock like a thousand years since he had had a careless heart, yet the ruin of his home for the moment seemed less dreadful than its cause, and the new light it had thrown on his situation. Never before was he so desolate, so desolate!—forsaken of God and man. All night his flaming house had stained the clouds: the crackle of its timbers and the thunder of its falling walls appeared to fill the whole world’s ear, yet none had come to his assistance: as if abhorred by all, he was left to dree his weird alone among the ashes. One thing only he had saved besides his life—a bottle of Bordeaux. He had seized upon it as the only friend from whom he could look for consolation. Even the maid and the dog had fled from him, but she returned at nightfall to the cheerless lodge to make it habitable. “Where in the name of God got ye yon accursed thing?” he asked her, and she told him, flushing, she had got it from a lover. “A lover!” quo’ Wanlock, regarding his helpless arm, remembering happier things. “Are there still folk loving?” “It’s what he would like to be,” said the woman awkwardly; “but the man’s a dwarfish waif I daren’t hardly venture through the woods for; ye’ll have heard him screech for a month past. He haunts me like a bogle, comes from I kenna where—a crazy, crooked, gangrel body, worse than the Blednock brownie. He was squatted at the door last night when I got home, and he gave me the brooch,—I—I wish to the Lord I had never seen it.” “Where is it now?” asked Wanlock. “I—I have given it back,” the girl replied with some confusion. “Ye were wise in that,” said her master. “Woe upon the owner of the havock brooch! for I have had it too, and the heart of me is withered in my bosom. No brooch, no human brooch, I’ll warrant! but a clot of the blood that dried on the spear of the Roman soldier. Ye have trafficked with the devil and have worn his seal. It has robbed me of my money and my home, my son, my daughter, and the power of my members—look at that blemished arm!”