When Raymount saw the creature who had turned his
hitherto happy life into a shame and a misery lying at his feet thus
abject, he became instantly conscious of the whip in his hand, and
without a moment's pause, a moment's thought, heaved his arm aloft, and
brought it down with a fierce lash on the quivering flesh of his son. He
richly deserved the punishment, but God would not have struck him that
way. There was the poison of hate in the blow. He again raised his arm;
but as it descended, the piercing shriek that broke from the youth
startled even the possessing demon, and the violence of the blow was
broken. But the lash of the whip found his face, and marked it for a
time worse than the small-pox. What the unnatural father would have done
next, I do not know. While the cry of his son yet sounded in his ears,
another cry like its echo from another world, rang ghastly through the
storm like the cry of the banshee. From far away it seemed to come
through the world of wet mist and howling wind. The next instant a
spectral face flitted swift as a bird up to the window, and laid itself
close to the glass. It was a French window, opening to the ground, and
neither shutters nor curtains had been closed.
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