‘Nay, it was neither. It was a babe or a spirit; a damned goblin or a soul in torment. Christ, how this air suffocates me; I choke, I swoon.’ He tore open his vest about the throat, and began to pray aloud. He stopped suddenly. ‘For the love of Our Lady, pray,’ he cried to his wife. But she did not utter one word. A shrill wail cut through the darkness, a wail of immeasurable anguish and pleading, the sorrow of eternal ages in the cry of a chrisom child. ‘The chest, the chest,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘O Christ,’ his wife answered, ‘’tis not that.’ ‘It is, it is,’ he screamed, leaping from the bed and feeling with his hands over the surface of the wall nigh where the key of the chest was usually hung. ‘’Tis not here,’ he cried. ‘Where is it?’ ‘I know not; I have not seen it many days.’ ‘A light, a light,’ he moaned. He stumbled into the other room, and presently returned with a torch he had kindled at the still glimmering house-fire. ‘Help thou to search,’ he whispered. His wife rose mechanically from the bed, and together they searched both chambers for the key. ‘Hast thou not seen it?’ asked Gilbert. ‘Nay.’ He flung open the house door and let the cool air of the night blow upon his brow and bosom. The moon was beginning to pale and the darkness trembled before the dawn. Ever and anon from the bedchamber came the long-drawn wails. At each cry Meg shuddered anew as though at a spasm of pain that tore her entrails. Her head was sunk on her bosom and her hair fell over her face. ‘Lord have mercy upon us,’ groaned Gilbert, burying his face in his hands, ‘Christ have mercy upon us.’ His wife gave a suppressed scream; she was as a woman in travail. ‘Christ deliver us from the Powers of Hell,’ said Gilbert suddenly, ‘but with the Lord’s help will I open the chest.’ ‘Nay, nay,’ implored Meg, ‘’tis some Devil.’ ‘We are in the Lord’s hands,’ said Gilbert. ‘Away, woman.’ He went to the ingle nook where his axe hung and took it down. Then he stepped into the bedchamber pushing aside his wife, who would have stayed him. She followed him whimpering, and ever and anon bursting into a great dry sob. The inky darkness had given place to the wan light of earliest morning. They regarded each other in the face; their countenances were ashen grey and had aged ten years in the single night. Wailing filled the chamber. ‘It must be done,’ quoth Gilbert. ‘It must be done. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’