What was it I saw there? It was a light, like the light I had seen on
the night of my father's death, a weird, ghostly light, moving between
the great grey prongs.

I remembered then of what that light was supposed to be the omen, and
my senses seemed to leave me. Everywhere, everywhere, I could hear
taunting voices crying "Murderer! Murderer!" The winds as they swept
by said it, the sea playing with the pebbles on the beach said it, and
thousands of voices all around me uttered the same dread word. I put
my fingers in my ears to keep away the hideous sound; but not so could
I silence conscience. The word came not from without, but from within.
It was my guilty soul that repeated it, until I longed to have the
power to flee from the self which I loathed.

Not only did my ears hear the word; my eyes saw it. Everywhere it was
written. On the broad sky I could see it written from end to end. I
turned to the sea, and on its silvery waters the same awful word was
traced, in letters that were black as the blackest night. I turned my
eyes landward, and it was there, and when I closed them I saw it still.

Yet I was not sorry for what I had done! I suffered the pains of hell,
but I was not sorry, nor did I hate my brother the less. Could I have
shed one bitter tear or realised one true feeling of repentance I
should have suffered less; but I could not, and this made my hell
harder to bear, it made my hell a hell of the blackest kind. Dives did
not feel the burning so keenly as I, for in his pain he could still
love his brothers and long for their salvation; but I was in worse
straits than he. I hated all, because of my hatred of one.

And all the time I felt this, I stood on the verge of the cliffs
hundreds of feet above the ever-sounding sea. My loneliness was
terrible! I longed to hear some voice, to feel the grasp of some
friendly hand, yet I dreaded the approach of any one.

My eyes and ears were, after a while, delivered from the terrible word,
and looking again I saw the mysterious light moving among the prongs of
the "Devil's Tooth," then I saw a form approaching me, a grey, bent,
ungainly form.

Trembling I waited as it approached, until it stood close by my side.

"What do 'ee zee?" said a croaking voice.

I did not reply. I felt that I could not.

"Es it the light you be lookin' at? That's Betsey Fraddam's lantern,
that es, and that do'ant tell'ee of any good luck."

I knew now that it wa