A GREAT WRONG, Or, The Mystery of Black Hollow Grange.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9997, 18 March 1910, Page 2

A GREAT WRONG, Or, The Mystery of Black Hollow Grange.

/ BY 5.T01A GARKI ON JONES. • Author of "Pelf and Power," "Strathmore's Sin," / Etc, etc.

CHAPTER IV.—Continued. 'The husband, you mean? Bless you, no, miss! But some think he made an end of hisself in (he lake yonder, and they do say, when it storms, and the winds are high, he comes back and sits on the shorn and she walks the terrace above, with her yellow hair streaming, wringing her white hands, and crying fit to break her heart.'

'And the haunted manor is rot far from here, is it' asks Lenore. 'A mile perhaps, us, beyond the black firs.' 'Were you ever m the old house 1 mean, since the murder?' 'Saints protect us, I'd as soon venture within the gates o' perdition. Why, no human creature has eve" crossed that black glen; and no one has ever entered the accursed place since the murder, excepting Ambrose Gerhart, and he was well-nigh frightened out of his wits.' 'There was a child left, I have heard,' Mis 3 Trevethon continues, moved by a curious desire to hear all the old dame can tell.

'Bless ye, yes, miss, a little mite of a girl, and she was wandering from room to room, a-sobbing and crying, and her mother's blood afore her youne eyes. They fetched her down here the very day alter the murder, and I gave her a bowl of goat's milk and brown bread from that very blue bowl on the dresser. Such a pretty little lady, the very picture of her mother.' 'And what became of her?'

'They took her away. His cousin came from over the sea, and took her off to London, and I've heard nothing of her since. She' may be dead by this —the better for her if she is, poor thing, for the mother's shame always falls on the daughter's head.'r 'Aye, true enough, better for he if she were dead,' Lenore echoes under her breath, with a weary sigh.

'Let me have a draft ot milk and a morsel of bread, and take this for your trouble,' she adds, aloud. The dame's eyes glitter greedily at sight of the silver which Lenore puts in her yellow palm, and she hobbles away, and produces a, bowl of milk and a small loaf of bread.

Lenore drinks the milk from the same blue bowl from which she was fed so many years ago, puts a morsel of the loaf in her pocket, bids her hostess adieu, and departs. The old woman looks after her, shading her eyes from the afternoon sunlight. 'The saints protect us,'she mutters,' they be as like as two peas! It surely can't be the ghost cf the murdered fair lady? 1 should drop in my shoes with fear if I really thought so.'

CHAPTER V. AN AWFUL APPARITION. It is the same old story of murder I and mystery that Miss Trevethon had heard from the lips of old Koisby a few years before. He was an old and devoted servant of the House of Trevethon, and on his death-bed he had told the young heiress the terrible tale of her mother's murder, and her father's disappearance. The terrible affair happened some two or three years after the formal betrothal, or "Fairy Marriage," with which our story opei.ed. Geoffrey Trevethon, the Lavished heir, was still off in India, serving his country under bis assumed name, while his cousin, Arthur, reigned in his stead at Lyndith Hall. But poor Sir Arthur was an invalid, suffering from an incurable disease, and took but small comfort in his wealth and his honors. The one desire of his heart was to see his adopted brother again, and to restore to him the heritage which his father's unnatural cruelty had taken from him. But Geoffrey did not return, and his letters to his friends in England were few and far between. Despairing of ever seeing him again, Sir Arthur made his will, binding his daughter, as he fancied, to remain true and loyal to her childish marriage with her cousin, Richmond. Some time thereafter he went with his family to spend the summer months after the custom of his race, at an old home amid the Scottish hills, known by the name of tflack Hollow Grange—a gloomy, ghostly, grand old house, built on the summit of a bold spur, beneath which lay a wild glen, from which the place derived its name. Sir Arthur went up with tronps of gay friends, and a few efficient servants, and through all the golden summer-time, the hill country was enlivened with their festivities. I

It was as late as September when the party broke up, and the baronet made preparations for his return to Englpnd. Only a day or so before his departure a foreign letter came through his London agent from the bannished heir, and it contained the welcome intelligence, that he was coming home at last, His wife was dead and buried in India, and in obedience to her dying wi«h, he was coming, with his son, Richmond, to Lyndith Hall.

This letter made Sir Arthur another

man. Filled with delight, he made preparations for an immediate visit to London to meet and welcome the returning soldier. 'No matter how soon I die now, I shall die content,' he said to his wife on the eve of their departure. - 'To see Geoifrey reinstated in his old home is the dearest wish of rny life.' The guests were all gone from Black Hollow Grange; the servants had been sent in advance to Lyndith Hall, and on the morrow Sir Arthur and his family would fellow. The morrow came, and the men who were to take charge of the Grange, appeared at an early hour. They found the old house as silent as a tomb, and when they entered, after ineffectual efforts to rouse the family, an awful sight met them. Under the sickly glimmer of the still burning chandeliers, all bathed in blood, lay Sir Arthur's beautiful wife, brutally murdered; in the room beyond her maid was also found dead; and wandering about the nursery, sobbing in terror and grief, was tbe little girl L,enore. Sir Arthur himself was gone. No trace of him, either alive or dead, could be found elsewhere.

A week, perhaps, after this shock ing tragedy the cousin of the murdered man arrived in London with his little son. He was greatly shocked, as may be imagined but he evinced great presence of mind, and at once hurried to the scene of the murder. He found the neighbourhood in great excitement, and the Grange in the hands of the authorities, who were using every effort to elucidate the mystery. Vainly enough, however, not the slightest clue could be had to the murderer, nor could the mysterious disappearance of Sir Arthur be accounted for. His wife poor beautiful lady who was a foreigner by birth and without relatives in England had been buried in the hollow below the Grange, and a report was circulated that her frailty had equalled ,her beauty, and her husband had murdered her in a fit of jealousy and then fled. This report Geoffrey Trevethon contradicted with great indignation, and took upon himself the task of | clearing up the mystery and lifting i the dishonour from his cousin's name.

Putting aside all scruples in regard to his late father's will, he at once accepted the title which belonged to him, and installed himself as a guardian of httle Lenore, assuming entire control of the vast estates, of which she was sole heir.

He worked assiduously, too, sparing no expense or pains to solve the strange mystery and bring the criminal to justice, but without success. Not the slightest clue could be bad to the mysterious disappearance of Sir Arthur or to murderer of his wife.'

Years passed and the mystery of Black Hollow Grange was a mystery still; and little by little the terrible story had come to Lenore's ears as she grew toward perfect womanhood. A word here, and a hint there, until at last the old servant, on his death-bed, had poured the whole awful story into her ear.

From that hour the heiress of Trevethon had thought of little else. She thinks of it now, standing all alone amid the wild Scottish hills under the very shadow of the weird old house which holds the awful secret.

The sun bangs low in the west, ito yellow rays gleaming on the quaint, weird windows and gray gables ot the haunted Grange; but in her brave, resolute heart Miss Trevethon resolves to push her adventure to the end. She has planned too long to obtain this opportunity to have any thought of renouncing it. Yes despite her brave blood, and her invincible will, her young.cheek, blanches, and a slight shudder shakes her, as she looks up at the frowning old mansion, diu.ly revealed through the thick foliage of the black firs. In that gruesome, ghostly manor she was made an orphan. Ah. Heaven, if she might only be able to solve the mystery and lift the stain from her dead mother's name. I

With rapid steps she makes her way to the black glen below the manor. It is a wild and lonely valley, shut in by funeral borders of black firs, and in its very centre uprises a spectral stone cross.

Lenore casts herself down upon the mossy earth and reads the simple inscription: "Lenore Trevethon." Lenore is deeply moved; she rests her throbbing head against the cold tombstone and weeps as she never wept before. 'Mother, dear, beautiful mother!' she moans. 'I do noi believe one word of the evil they impute to you —I never will believe it. Oh, mother, look down from heaven, and pityv'your poor child!' TO P'. CCI'T^INUEO