Mark Wylder’s Hand.

Just at the darkest point of the road, a little above the rude column which I have mentioned, Lake’s horse, a young one, shied, stopped short, recoiling on its haunches, and snorted fiercely into the air. At the same time, the two dogs which had accompanied us began to bark furiously beneath in the ravine.

The tall form of Uncle Lorne was leaning against a tree at the edge of the ravine, with his left hand extended towards us, and his right pointing down the precipice. Perhaps it was this odd apparition that startled Lake’s horse.

‘I told you he was coming up — lend him a hand,’ yelled Uncle Lorne, in great excitement.

No one at such a moment minded his maunderings: but many people afterwards thought that the crazed old man, in one of his night-rambles, had seen that which, till now, no one had imagined; and that Captain Lake himself, whose dislike of him was hardly disguised, suspected him, at times of that alarming knowledge.

Lake plunged the spurs into his beast, which reared so straight that she toppled backward toward the edge of the ravine.

‘Strike her on the head; jump off,’ shouted Wealdon.

But he did neither.

‘D— it! put her head down; lean forward,’ bellowed Wealdon again.

But it would not do. With a crash among briars, and a heavy thump from beneath that shook the earth, the mare and her rider went over. A shout of horror broke from us all; and Jekyl, watching the catastrophe, was very near pulling our horse over the edge, and launching us all together, like the captain, into the defile.

In a moment more we were all on the ground, and scrambling down the side of the ravine, among rocks, boughs, brambles, and ferns, in the deep shadows of the gorge, the dogs still yelling furiously from below.

‘Here he is,’ cried Jekyl. ‘How are you, Lake? Much hurt, old boy? By Jove, he’s killed, I think.’

Lake groaned.

He lay about twelve feet below the edge. The mare, now lying near the bottom of the gorge, had, I believe, fallen upon him, and then tumbled over.

Strange to say, Lake was conscious, and in a few seconds, he said, in reply to the horrified questions of his friend —

‘I’m all smashed. Don’t move me;’ and, in a minute more —‘Don’t mind that d — d brute; she’s killed. Let her lie.’

It appeared very odd, but so it was, he appeared eager upon this point, and, faint as he was, almost savage.

‘Tell them to let her lie there.’

Wealdon and I, however, scrambled down the bank. He was right. The mare lay stone dead, on her side, at the bottom. He lifted her head, by the ear, and let it fall back.

In the meantime the dogs continued their unaccountable yelling close by.

‘What the devil’s that?’ said Wealdon.

Something like a stunted, blackened branch was sticking out of the peat, ending in a set of short, thickish twigs. This is what it seemed. The dogs were barking at it. It was, really, a human hand and arm, disclosed by the slipping of the bank; undermined by the brook, which was swollen by the recent rains.

The dogs were sniffing and yelping about it.

‘It’s a hand!’ cried Wealdon, with an oath.

‘A hand?’ I echoed.

We were both peering at it, having drawn near, stooping and hesitating as men do in a curious horror.

It was, indeed, a human hand and arm, disclosed from about the elbow, enveloped in a discoloured coat-sleeve, which fell back from the limb, and the fingers, like it black, were extended in the air. Nothing more of the body to which it belonged, except the point of a knee, in stained and muddy trousers, protruding from the peat, was visible.

It must have lain there a considerable time, for, notwithstanding the antiseptic properties of that sort of soil, mixed with the decayed bark and fibre of trees, a portion of the flesh of the hand was decomposed, and the naked bone disclosed. On the little finger something glimmered dully.

In this livid hand, rising from the earth, there was a character both of menace and appeal; and on the finger, as I afterwards saw at the inquest, glimmered the talismanic legend ‘Resurgam — I will rise again!’ It was the corpse of Mark Wylder, which had lain buried here undiscovered for many months. A horrible odour loaded the air. Perhaps it was this smell of carrion, from which horses sometimes recoil with a special terror, that caused the swerving and rearing which had ended so fatally. At that moment we heard a voice calling, and raising our eyes, saw Uncle Lorne looking down from the rock with an agitated scowl.

‘I’ve done with him now — emeritus — he touches me, no more. Take him by the hand, merciful lads, or they’ll draw him down again.’

And with these words Uncle Lorne receded, and I saw him no more.

As yet we had no suspicion whose was the body thus unexpectedly discovered.

We beat off the dogs, and on returning to Lake, found Jekyl trying to raise him a little against a tree. We were not far from Redman’s Farm, and it was agreed, on hasty consultation, that our best course would be to carry Lake thither at once by the footpath, and that one of us — Wealdon undertook this — should drive the carriage on, and apprising Rachel on the way of the accident which had happened, and that her brother was on his way thither, should drive on to Buddle’s house, sending assistance to us from the town.

It was plain that Stanley Lake’s canvass was pretty well over. There was not one of us who looked at him that did not feel convinced that he was mortally hurt. I don’t think he believed so himself then; but we could not move him from the place where he lay without inflicting so much pain, that we were obliged to wait for assistance.

‘D— the dogs, what are they barking for?’ said Lake, faintly. He seemed distressed by the noise.

‘There’s a dead body partly disclosed down there — some one murdered and buried; but one of Mr. Juke’s young men is keeping them off.’

Lake made an effort to raise himself, but with a grin and a suppressed moan he abandoned it.

‘Is there no doctor — I’m very much hurt?’ said Lake, faintly, after a minute’s silence.

We told him that Buddle had been sent for; and that we only awaited help to get him down to Redman’s Farm.

When Rachel heard the clang of hoofs and the rattle of the tax-cart driving down the mill-road, at a pace so unusual, a vague augury of evil smote her. She was standing in the porch of her tiny house, and old Tamar was sitting knitting on the bench close by.

‘Tamar, they are galloping down the road, I think — what can it mean?’ exclaimed the young lady, scared she could not tell why; and old Tamar stood up, and shaded her eyes with her shrunken hand.

Tom Wealdon pulled up at the little wicket. He was pale. He had lost his hat, too, among the thickets, and could not take time to recover it. Altogether he looked wild.

He put his hand to where his hat should have been in token of salutation, and said he —

‘I beg pardon, Miss Lake, Ma’am, but I’m sorry to say your brother the captain’s badly hurt, and maybe you could have a shakedown in the parlour ready for him by the time I come back with the doctor, Ma’am?’

Rachel, she did not know how, was close by the wheel of the vehicle by this time.

‘Is it Sir Harry Bracton? He’s in the town, I know. Is Stanley shot?’

‘Not shot; only thrown, Miss, into the Dell; his mare shied at a dead body that’s there. You’d better stay where you are, Miss; but if you could send up some water, I think he’d like it. Going for the doctor, Ma’am; good-bye, Miss Lake.’

And away went Wealdon, wild, pale, and hatless, like a man pursued by robbers.

‘Oh! Tamar, he’s killed — Stanley’s killed — I’m sure he’s killed, and all’s discovered’— and Rachel ran wildly up the hill a few steps, but stopped and returned as swiftly.

‘Thank God, Miss,’ said old Tamar, lifting up her trembling fingers and white eyes to Heaven. ‘Better dead, Miss, than living on in sin and sorrow, better discovered than hid by daily falsehood and cruelty. Old Tamar’s tired of life; she’s willing to go, and wishin’ for death this many a day. Oh! Master Stanley, my child!’

Rachel went into the parlour and kneeled down, with white upturned face and clasped hands. But she could not pray. She could only look her wild supplication; — deliverance — an issue out of the terrors that beset her; and ‘oh! poor miserable lost Stanley!’ It was just a look and an inarticulate cry for mercy.

An hour after Captain Stanley Brandon Lake, whose ‘election address............