Even with the thought a new uproar broke upon my senses--the thunderous heaving onrush of a mighty torrent of water underfoot. In a flash I knew what had happened. The hideous creature had lifted the sluice and turned the swollen flood upon the wheel. Then the past swept over me in a hurried panorama as my poor brain paused for rest. Who killed Modred--How did he die? What is the mystery of Duke Straw? What was the sin of my mother? Whose portrait was it that my father nailed to the axle of the wheel? These and many other of the problems haunting my life came to me in swift succession, only to be passed in dullness and left unanswered. CHAPTER LX. WHO KILLED MODRED? In the instant of realization, as I stood near, death-stricken, where I had stopped, I felt the whole room shake and tremble as the torrent leaped upon the wheel with a flinging shock, heard a clanking screech rise from the monster as it turned, slowly at first, but quickly gathering speed under the awful pressure; heard one last bubbling scream waver up from the depths and die within the narrow vault; then all sense was whelmed and numbed in the single booming crash of water. Already, indeed, the choked water, hurled high by the paddles, was gushing through the opening in cascades upon the floor. How long would the ancient rafters and beams and walls resist the terrible pressure? I had no thought or desire to escape. What had taken me long to describe, all passed in a few seconds. But Providence, that here included so many actors in the tragedy in one common ruin, had not writ my sentence, and my young suffering soul it spared to this dark world of memories. Insatiable yet, however, it claimed a last victim. He came running back now, breathing hateful triumph in the lust of his wickedness--came to gloat over the work of his evil hands. I heard him splash into the water that poured from the wheel--dance in it--laugh and scream out: “Tit for tat, and the devil pipes! Caught in his own net! You, there, in the dark! Do you hear? Where are you? Where?--my arms hunger for you!” The paralysis of my senses left me. “Man or fiend?” I shrieked above the thunder of the water. “Down on your knees! It is the end for both of us! Down, and weep and pray--for I believe, before God, you have just murdered your son!” There was a brief fearful pause; he seemed to be listening--then, without preface or warning, there came a sudden surging crash, deafening and appalling and I thought “Is it upon us?” Still I stood unscathed, though a cracking volley of sounds, rending and shattering, succeeded the crash, and one wild, dreadful cry that pierced through all. Then silence fell, broken only by the smooth, washing sweep of a great body of water through the channel below. Silence fell and lapped me in a merciful unconsciousness; for, with the relaxing of the mental pressure I went plump down upon the floor where I stood and lay in a long faint. * * * * * *