“He received the book, and took it into his study. This was in the morning. At midnight I looked in. He turned his face. My dear, it was haggard. I asked him what was the matter that he looked so ill. He replied, rambling, that the fathers had eaten sour grapes. I begged him to leave off, and to come upstairs. He said something in reply, but I did not catch it, and so I left him. “He never came upstairs. At five in the morning I woke up, and finding that he was not in bed, I hurried down the stairs full of sad presentiments. Alas! he was dead. Do not ask me how--he was dead! “Dear Lucy, you are now the only one left of the three children. I have burnt the book. At all events, my children shall not see it or hear of this terrible story. I implore you to burn your copy.” Mrs. Galley wrote after this: “I have read the book again quite through. I cannot understand at all why my brother killed himself. As for the murderer, of course it was the man named John Dunning. Who else could it have been?” Leonard looked up. It was three o’clock in the morning. His face was troubled with doubts and misgiving. “Why did they burn the book?” he said. “As for the murder, there must have been someone hidden in the wood. That is clear. No other explanation is possible. But why did my grandfather cut his throat? There is nothing in the book that could lead him to such an act.” CHAPTER XII ON THE SITE Leonard shut the book and threw it aside. He sat thinking over it for a little. Then he thought it was time to go to bed. There was not much of the night left; in fact, it was already broad daylight. But if it had been a night of mid-winter for darkness he could not have been visited by a more terrifying nightmare. In his sleep the Family History continued. It now took the form of a Mystery--a Mystery in a Shape. It sat upon his afflicted chest and groaned. He was unable to guess or understand what kind of Mystery it was, or, in his sleep, to connect it with anything on the earth or in the world outside this earth. He woke up and shook it off; he went to sleep again, and it returned, unrelenting. It was vague and vast and terrible; a Thing with which the sufferer wrestled in vain, which he could not shake off and could not comprehend. There are many kinds of nightmares; that of the unintelligible mystery, which will not go away and cannot be driven away, is one of the worst.