"Wherefore?" rejoined Ranulph; "if he be my brother, shall I raise my hand against him?" "Wherefore not?" returned Lady Rookwood. "'Twere an accursed deed," replied Ranulph. "The mystery is resolved. 'Twas for this that I was summoned home." "Ha! what say you? summoned! by whom?" "My father!" "Your father?" echoed Lady Rookwood, in great surprise. "Ay, my dead father! He has appeared to me since his decease." "Ranulph, you rave--you are distracted with grief--with astonishment." "No, mother; but I will not struggle against my destiny." "Pshaw! your destiny is Rookwood, its manors, its lands, its rent-roll, and its title; nor shall you yield it to a base-born churl like this. Let him prove his rights. Let the law adjudge them to him, and we will yield--but not till then. I tell thee he has _not_ the right, nor can he maintain it. He is a deluded dreamer, who, having heard some idle tale of his birth, believes it, because it chimes with his wishes. I treated him with the scorn he deserved. I would have driven him from my presence, but he was armed, as you see, and forced me hither, perhaps to murder me; a deed he might have accomplished had it not been for your intervention. His life is already forfeit, for an attempt of the same sort last night. Why else came he hither? for what else did he drag me to this spot? Let him answer that!" "I _will_ answer it," replied Luke, raising himself from the bier. His face was ghastly as the corpse over which he leaned. "I had a deed to do, which I wished you to witness. It was a wild conception. But the means by which I have acquired the information of my rights were wild. Ranulph, we are both the slaves of fate. You have received your summons hither--I have had mine. Your father's ghost called you; my mother's spectral hand beckoned me. Both are arrived. One thing more remains, and my mission is completed." Saying which, he drew forth the skeleton hand; and having first taken the wedding-ring from the finger, he placed the withered limb upon the left breast of his father's body. "Rest there," he cried, "for ever." "Will you suffer that?" said Lady Rookwood, tauntingly, to her son. "No," replied Ranulph; "such profanation of the dead shall not be endured, were he ten times my brother. Stand aside," added he, advancing towards the bier, and motioning Luke away. "Withdraw your hand from my father's body, and remove what you have placed upon it." "I will neither remove it nor suffer it to be removed," returned Luke. "'Twas for that purpose I came hither. 'Twas to that hand he was united in life, in death he shall not be divided from it." "Such irreverence shall not be!" exclaimed Ranulph, seizing Luke with one hand, and snatching at the cereclothes with the other. "Remove it, or by Heaven----" "Leave go your hold," said Luke, in a voice of thunder; "you strive in vain."