Keep
close and listen--I can't say much more. Where was I?--Ah, your
father! He threatened to kill me if I didn't swear to keep it
secret; and in terror of my life I swore. He made me help him to
carry the body--we took it all across the heath--oh! horrible,
horrible, under the bright moon--(lift me higher, Gabriel). You
know the great stones yonder, set up by the heathens; you know
the hollow place under the stones they call 'The Merchant's
Table'; we had plenty of room to lay him in that, and hide him
so; and then we ran back to the cottage. I never dared to go near
the place afterward; no, nor your father either! (Higher,
Gabriel! I'm choking again.) We burned the pocket-book and the
knapsack--never knew his name--we kept the money to spend.
(You're not lifting me; you're not listening close enough!) Your
father said it was a legacy, when you and your mother asked about
the money. (You hurt me, you shake me to pieces, Gabriel, when
you sob like that.) It brought a curse on us, the money; the
curse has drowned your father and your brother; the curse is
killing me; but I've confessed--tell the priest I confessed
before I died. Stop her; stop Perrine! I hear her getting up.
Take his bones away from the Merchant's Table, and bury them for
the love of God! and tell the priest (lift me higher, lift me
till I am on my knees)--if your father was alive, he'd murder me;
but tell the priest--because of my guilty soul--to pray,
and--remember the Merchant's Table--to bury, and to pray--to pray
always for--"
As long as Perrine heard faintly the whispering of the old man,
though no word that he said reached her ear, she shrank from
opening the door in the partition.
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