orrors could
have given him strength to utter, he called upon earth, upon heaven and
upon all that was infernal, to save him from his impending doom.

All was in vain. It was an impending doom which nothing but the direct
interposition of Heaven could have at all averted; and it was not likely
that any such perversion of the regular laws of nature would take place
to save such a man as Marchdale.

Again came the crashing sound of falling stones, and he was certain that
the old ruins, which had stood for so many hundred years the storm, and
the utmost wrath of the elements, was at length yielding, and crumbling
down.

What else could he expect but to be engulphed among the
fragments--fragments still weighty and destructive, although in decay.
How fearfully now did his horrified imagination take in at one glance,
as it were, a panoramic view of all his past life, and how absolutely
contemptible, at that moment, appeared all that he had been striving
for.

But the walls shake again, and this time the vibration is more fearful
than before. There is a tremendous uproar above him--the roof yields to
some superincumbent pressure--there is one shriek, and Marchdale lies
crushed beneath a mass of masonry that it would take men and machinery
days to remove from off him.

All is over now. That bold, bad man--that accomplished hypocrite--that
mendacious, would-be murderer was no more. He lies but a mangled,
crushed, and festering corpse.

May his soul find mercy with his God!

The storm, from this moment, seemed to relax in its violence, as if it
had accomplished a great purpose, and, consequently, now, need no longer
"vex the air with its boisterous presence." Gradually the thunder died
away in the distance. The wind no longer blew in blustrous gusts, but,
with a gentle murmuring, swept around the ancient pile, as if singing
the requiem of the dead that lay beneath--that dead which mortal eyes
were never to look upon.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

THE MEETING OF CHARLES AND FLORA.

[Illustration]

Charles Holland followed Jack Pringle for some time in silence from
Bannerworth Hall; his mind was too full of thought concerning the past
to allow him to indulge in much of that kind of conversation in which
Jack Pringle might be fully considered to be a proficient.

As for Jack, somehow or another, he had felt his dignity offended in the
garden of Bannerworth Hall, and he had made up his mind, as he
afterwards stated in his