“Did you burn it, destroy it?” cried Tuke. “Speak out, man! I am the only one to blame.” “I did not destroy it, sir. I----” “Yes, yes. Oh, out with it, in the devil’s name!” “I gave it to the woman, and she took it away.” “The woman? What--? Ah! you mean the gipsy I saw you in talk with.” It all recurred to him in a moment--the stolen interview; the bundle passed from one to the other. “Where is she?” he said faintly. “Do you know where she is?” “I--yes, sir. I could lead you to the wild place she inhabits.” “You must do so,” said Tuke eagerly. “I have done an unwitting wrong to a great sufferer. Dennis, you will lead me to her, won’t you? and help me to the recovery of this accursed stone?” “Sir, it is accursed, I think; but I will lead you to her.” “Good fellow!--But why did you make her its custodian? What did she want with it; and has she it still?” “I will answer for her, with her life, in that.” He looked strange, and his master as strangely on him. “What did she want with it?” repeated the latter. “Sir, sir--how can I say? Perhaps for memory of a great criminal, God forgive him! I implore you not to force me to an answer.” Tuke scarcely seemed to heed him, or his obvious distress. His vision was lost in pre-occupation. “Wait!” he said, as if talking to himself. “We must take Luvaine into our confidence before we go further. It is his right to know all; and he must judge me fairly. Be quiet and secret, my good fellow, and don’t touch upon this subject again without my invitation.” He dismissed his servant, and sat for an hour in the red fire-light deeply pondering. The snow pricked and rustled on the casement, as he dreamed by the still glowing hearth. A stealthy noise of mice was behind the wainscot, and through all the house the stealthy tread of unseen things wandering about the ghostly rooms overhead. One of these seemed to reveal itself--here, at his feet. It crept in very quietly, its white bosom heaving, its hair like a flame of autumn mist, and put warm lips to his hand as it hung slackly, and seized and held it a moment against its soft neck--and so went silently the way it had come. By and by he roused himself, and looked up with a smile, half-comic and half-pitiful. “For a country squire of particular morals,” he murmured, “I am quite unduly St. Anthonied by these visions. Did ever man so pay the penalty of his weakness?” CHAPTER XXXVI. Sir David Blythewood had a particularly infectious laugh, and like all men who make a plaything of their own dignity, he was wont to find his risibilities tickled consumedly before the solemnity of another’s self-importance. Sooner or later the humorous side of any situation would find him, and then, perhaps, it was only those at whom his mischief of merriment was directed who failed to appreciate his sense of the comical.