'Winifred,' I said at last, as we sat and looked at the sea, 'I begin to fear we must be moving.'
She started up, vexed that the hint to move had come from me.
'The fact is,' I said, 'I particularly want to go into the old church.'
'Into the old church to-night?' said Winifred, with a look of astonishment and alarm that I could not understand.
'Yes; something was left undone there this afternoon at the funeral, and I must go at once. But why do you look so alarmed?'
'Oh, don't go into the old church to-night,' said Winifred.
I stood and looked at her, puzzled and strangely disturbed.
'Henry,' said she, 'I know you will think me very foolish, but I have not yet got over the fright that shriek gave me, the shriek we both heard the moment before the landslip. That shriek was not a noise made by the rending of trees, Henry. No, no; we both know better than that, Henry.'
I gave a start; for, try as I would, I had not really succeeded in persuading myself that what I had heard was anything but a human voice in terror or in pain.
'What do you think the noise was, then?' said I.
'I don't know; but I know what I felt as it came shuddering along the sand, and then went wailing over the sea.'
'My heart stood still, for it seemed to me to be the call from the grave.'
'The call from the grave! and pray what is that? I feel how sadly my education has been neglected.'
'Don't scoff, Henry. It is said that when the fate of an old family is at stake, there will sometimes come to him who represents it a call from the grave, and when I saw Snap standing stock still, his hair bristling with terror, I knew that it was no earthly shriek. I felt sure it was a call from the grave, and I knelt on the sands and prayed. Henry, Henry, don't go in the church to-night.'
That Winifred's words affected me profoundly I need not say. The shriek, whatever it was, had been responded to by her soul and by mine in the same mysterious way. But the important thing to do was to prevent her from imagining that her superstitious terrors had affected me.
'Really, Winnie,' I said, 'this double-voiced shriek of yours, which is at once the shriek of the Welshman at the bottom of the swollen falls and the Celtic call from the grave, is the most dramatic shriek I ever heard of. It would make its fortune on the stage. But with all its power of being the shriek of two different people at once, it must not prevent my going into the church to do my duty; so we had better part here at this very spot. You go up the cliffs by Needle Point, and _I_ will take Flinty Point gangway.'