It shook
my heart--it shook my heart so that I could not speak.
'I felt,' said she, 'that something awful had happened. And it
affects yourself, Henry?'
'It affects myself.'
'And very deeply?'
'Very deeply, Winnie.'
Then, pulling from my pocket the silver casket and the parchment
scroll, I said, 'It has relation to these.'
'_That_ I felt,' said she; 'how could it be otherwise? Oh, the
miscreant! I curse him; I curse him!'
'Winifred,' I said, 'between me and this casket, and the cross
mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an
amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been
disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is
but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable
calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin
and that of her to whom this amulet was given) a sacrifice is
demanded.'
'Henry, you terrify me to death. What is the sacrifice? Oh God! Oh
God!'
'My father's son must die, Winnie.'
She turned ashen pale, but struggling to be playful, she said, 'I
fear that the family of Aylwin and the family of somebody else must
even take the calamity and bear it; for I don't mean my Henry to die,
let me assure both families of _that_.
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