knew to
be a procrastinator in everything. His crime might, even yet, be only
a crime in intent; and, if so, I could prevent it easily enough. My
first business was to hurry to the church, and, if not yet too late,
keep guard over the tomb. But to achieve this I must get quit of
Winifred without a moment's delay. Now Winifred's most direct path to
the cottage was the path I myself must take to the church, the
gangway behind Flinty Point. Yet _she_ must not pass the church with
me, lest an encounter with her father should take place. There was
thus but one course open. I must induce her to take the gangway
behind the other point of the cove; and how was this to be compassed?
That was what I was racking my brain about.

'Winifred,' I said at last, as we sat and looked at the sea, 'I begin
to fear we must be moving.'

She started up, vexed that the hint to move had come from me.

'The fact is,' I said, 'I particularly want to go into the old
church.'

'Into the old church to-night?' said Winifred, with a look of
astonishment and alarm that I could not understand.

'Yes; something was left undone there this afternoon at the funeral,
and I must go at once. But why do you look so alarmed?'

'Oh, don't go into the old church to-night,' said Winifred.

I stood and looked at her, puzzled and strangely disturbed.

'Henry,' said she, 'I know you will think me very foolish, but I have
not yet got over the fright that shriek gave me, the shriek we both
heard the moment before the landslip. That shriek was not a noise
made by the rending of trees, Henry. No, no; we both know better than
that, Henry.'

I gave a start; for, try as I would, I had not really succeeded in
persuading myself that what I had heard was anything but a human
voice in terror or in pain.

'What do you think the noise was, then?' said I.

'I don't know; but I know what I felt as it came shuddering along the
sand, and then went wailing over the sea.'

'What did you feel, Winnie?'

'My heart stood still, for it seemed to me to be the call from the
grave.'

'The call from the grave! and pray what is that? I feel how sadly my
education has been neglected.'

'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family
is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a
call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his
hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I
felt sure it was a call f