The next evening the clergyman, his cousin the lieutenant and Miss
Sophonisba went quietly about dusk to the old house. They went down into
the cellar, and the drag which the sailor had constructed brought up some
bleached bones, and at the second cast a skeleton hand and a skull. As the
latter was disengaged from the drag something fell glittering from it upon
the cellar floor: two coins rolled to different corners. Mr. H----, picked
them up. One was a Spanish piece, the other an English half guinea.
"Miss T----," said the clergyman in a low tone, "I will see that these
poor relics are laid in the burial-ground; and then--really I think you
had better leave the house."
Miss Sophonisba made no opposition.
The three ascended the cellar stairs, but as they entered the room they
paused terror-stricken, for across the floor, making, as it passed, a wild
gesture of despair, swept the Shape, living yet dead.
"What was that?" said the clergyman, who was the first to recover himself,
"_It_," said Miss Sophonisba in a whisper.
"I have seen that face before," said the sailor. "Once on a stormy passage
round the Cape we came upon a deserted wreck rolling helplessly upon the
waves. I, then a young midshipman, went in the boat which was sent to
board her. No living creature was there, but in the cabin we found a
corpse, that of an old, old man.
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