She was startled at length by a cry of astonishment from Clifford, and with the others she hastened up the steep acclivity to where he stood in a recess of the cliff. When she reached his side he was leaning heavily against the rocky wall, white and trembling.
"Oh, Clifford! speak! what is it?" she cried, breathless with a strange dread.
He could only point to the face of the rock with an unsteady finger, while the sweat-drops rained down from his white face, wrung by an agony of emotion which he vainly strove to repress.
Sinking down upon the sloping mound, matted with grass, and kneeling there at the foot of the cliff she read with a startled gaze the inscription which was carved in faint, moss-grown letters, upon the magnesian stone:--
"My Ivarene, my lost love, lies dead beside me with our little child, cold and still, on her breast. I am wounded and dying; but death is sweet now. We were coming here to watch for the trains when we were assaulted by the strange hunter, who shot us both. My love only breathed one breath. I carried her here. The child was pierced by the same shot. My eyes are growing dim; but I welcome death. Oh, farewell, bright world! I feel my life ebbing fast away, but would not stay without my darling. I go to meet her where there will be no more parting. Oh, the joy and bliss to see her smile again! It makes me long for death. We shall live again! Bru--"
With a wild cry of agonized grief, Mora covered her face, while the others read, with streaming eyes, that last message from the tomb. Then, as they drew back and waited with broken sobs and smothered weeping, Ralph and Robbie began tenderly to remove the _débris_ and soil which time had formed into a mound below the inscription.
When, at last, there was revealed two skeletons, locked together in the last clasp of love, which even death could not sever, Maud cried aloud with a wail of anguish:--
"Oh, _can this be the last_ of beautiful Ivarene and dear, brave Bruce?"
Choking back their sobs, they all knelt in a circle, while Mrs. Warlow's voice rose in a passionate, fervid prayer; then tenderly, with loving care, they carried the remains down to the Warlow carriage, leaving Mora and Clifford still lingering by the vacant mound.