`Yes,' cried Ralph, `detain him till tomorrow; then let them bring him here--him and my nephew--and come themselves, and be sure that I will be ready to receive them.'
`At what hour?' asked the voice.
`At any hour,' replied Ralph fiercely. `In the afternoon, tell them.
At any hour--at any minute--all times will be alike to me.'
He listened to the man's retreating footsteps until the sound had passed, and then, gazing up into the sky, saw, or thought he saw, the same black cloud that had seemed to follow him home, and which now appeared to hover directly above the house.
`I know its meaning now,' he muttered, `and the restless nights, the dreams, and why I have quailed of late--all pointed to this. Oh! if men by selling their own souls could ride rampant for a term, for how short a term would I barter mine tonight!'
The sound of a deep bell came along the wind. One.
`Lie on!' cried the usurer, `with your iron tongue! Ring merrily for births that make expectants writhe, and marriages that are made in hell, and toll ruefully for the dead whose shoes are worn already! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out, and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings this cursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw me on a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect the air!'
With a wild look around, in which frenzy, hatred, and despair were horribly mingled, he shook his clenched hand at the sky above him, which was still dark and threatening, and closed the window.
The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more.
`How's this?' cried one. `The gentleman say they can't make anybody hear, and have been trying these two hours.'
`And yet he came home last night,' said another; `for he spoke to somebody out of that window upstairs.'
They were a little knot of men, and, the window being mentioned, went out into the road to look up at it. This occasioned their observing that the house was still close shut, as the housekeeper had said she had left it on the previous night, and led to a great many suggestions: which terminated in two or three of the boldest getting round to the back, and so entering by a window, while the others remained outside, in impatient expectation.
They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters as they went, to admit the fading light: and still finding nobody, and everything quiet and in its place, doubted whether they should go farther. One man, however, remarking that they had not yet been into the garret, and that it was there he had been last seen, they agreed to look there too, and went up softly;for the mystery and silence made them timid.
After they had stood for an instant, on the landing, eyeing each other, he who had proposed their carrying the search so far, turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it open, looked through the chink, and fell back directly.
`It's very odd,' he whispered, `he's hiding behind the door! Look!'
They pressed forward to see; but one among them thrusting the others aside with a loud exclamation, drew a clasp-knife from his pocket, and dashing into the room, cut down the body.
He had torn a rope from one of the old trunks, and hung himself on an iron hook immediately below the trap-door in the ceiling--in the very place to which the eyes of his son, a lonely, desolate, little creature, had so often been directed in childish terror, fourteen years before.