"Randolph Trevethlan," she repeated, "son of a murdered mother, there's a dark hour at hand for thy house, but not darker than is due. I see it written on thy brow. I heard it in the screams that came down on the wind of the night. Say they her spirit is abroad in the towers where her bliss was made her bane? Ay, he is dead, but he shall answer it in his son." The wildness of the old crone's language suited Randolph's humour. She came quite close to him and looked up in his face. "Hast seen her?" she asked, lowering her voice to a whisper, "hast seen her, grandson Randolph? Thou knowest who I mean--thy mother, boy. My Margaret, my winsome Margaret. They tell me she's been seen in the castle. 'Tis long, long sin' I saw her myself. They said she grew pale and pale, but they wouldna let me come nigh. And is it true they say? Hast seen her, grandson Randolph?" "Ay, it is true, indeed," he answered, in a bewildered manner. "I have seen her indeed." There was the trunk of a large tree lying on the grass close beside them. The old woman took his hand and drew him to a seat upon it. He had neither the power nor the wish to resist. "Now I can see thee," Maud said. "Thou'st grown so tall; but art not like the gleesome lad that used to sport with my Michael. Woe's me! And how did she look? Said she aught to thee?" "She hung over my bed with a sweet smiling face, and she bent down and kissed my lips." "A sweet smiling face!" Maud echoed; "that was hers indeed, my own Margaret. And she smiled on thee, and kissed thee! Then she doth not hate thee?" "Why should she, Maud?" "Art thou not his son? and did he not murder her?" exclaimed the crone, in her former harsh manner. "Who said there was no marriage? He! he! Surely thou wilt defend her fame, Randolph Trevethlan?" "With my life," he answered. "What's this I'm saying?" again Maud cried, checking herself. "There's a dark hour at hand for thy house, I tell thee. God give thee the strength to bear it!" And she faltered away as quickly as she could, passed through the gate, and entered the lodge, leaving Randolph still seated, motionless, upon the timber. Old Maud Basset was deeply versed in all the wild superstitions which still lingered among the Cornubians. She knew the presages which foretold sorrow or death to different old houses. Here, the fall of one of the trees in the avenue was the harbinger of dole; there, ancient logs of timber rose to the surface of the pool in the park before a coming vacancy at the family board. She could tell, too, how drowned persons broke the stillness of night by hailing their own names; of the candle borne by unseen hands in the track of a future funeral; of many a kind of unholy augury; of evil spirits who led wayfarers astray, and precipitated them from the summit of their carns; and in particular of Tregagel, condemned for his many ill deeds to empty the fathomless pool of Dosmary by means of a limpet shell with a hole in it.