Perceiving there was no more to be got out of him, the marquis sent
him to bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he
reached the watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as
he went. The next day he did not appear. He thought himself he was
doomed, but his illness was only the prostration following upon
terror.
In the version of the story which he gave his fellow-servants, he
doubtless mingled the after visions of his bed with what he had when
half-awake seen and heard through the mists of his startled
imagination. His tale was this--that he saw the moat swell and rise,
boil over in a mass, and tumble into the court as full of devils as
it could hold, swimming in it, floating on it, riding it aloft as if
it had been a horse; that in a moment they had all vanished again,
and that he had not a doubt the castle was now swarming with
them--in fact, he had heard them all the night long.
The marquis walked up to the archway, saw nothing save the grim wall
of the keep, impassive as granite crag, and the ground wet a long
way towards the white horse; and never doubting he had lost his
chance by taking Tom for the culprit, contented himself with the
reflection that, whoever the night-walkers were, they had received
both a fright and a ducking, and betook himself to bed, where,
falling asleep at length, he saw little Molly in the arms of mother
Mary, who, presently changing to his own lady Anne that left him
about a year before little Molly came, held out a hand to him to
help him up beside them, whereupon the bubble sleep, unable to hold
the swelling of his gladness, burst, and he woke just as the first
rays of the sun smote the gilded cock on the bell-tower.
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