A New Dawn Over Devon Read Online Free PDF

the woman and those who follow . Give life to all who enter this door. May they know you sooner than I.”
    He paused, closed his eyes in near exhaustion, then added inaudibly—
    And now . . . I am ready . . . take me home .
    None heard the words, save him to whom they had been spoken.
    Arthur Crompton was discovered dead in his bed the following morning, a smile on his lips, according to the lady from the village who came in to cook for him, and who entered that day when he did not answer her knock.
    Most vexed of all by the curious turn was Henry Rutherford himself, the aging Lord of the Manor of Heathersleigh Hall, who, now that his fortunes had again reversed, would have done anything to resecure the property and oust the old woman. But he had no legal recourse. The will, brought forth by Lethbridge Crumholtz of Exeter, was legally irrefutable.
    There were now only two alive who knew the connection existing between man of the cloth and the woman of swaddling clothes—Orelia Moylan herself, and the lord of the manor whose secret both had sworn to protect. It was a secret she never revealed, as originally planned. She could not but conclude in the end that perhaps, as in the verses she had noted in both Bibles, the blessing had indeed been passed on as God intended.
    Bishop and peasant each carried the knowledge of their unknown alliance to their respective graves.
    Everyone said the woman’s former profession must have made her privy to some fact which resulted in the strange bequest of the former bishop’s country home. No living soul ever discovered what that secret was.

Hints and Clues
    1865–1911
    Generations went by, and those who came and went in Heathersleigh Hall pieced together fragmentary clues pointing toward the many mysteries about the place that the passage of time had obscured.
    In 1865 a five-year-old visiting youngster from the dispossessed branch of the family tree by the name of Gifford nearly uncovered the root of strife that would later possess him when, leaving his cousin Charles, with whom he was supposed to be playing, he ventured toward the darkened bedchamber of his aging grandfather.
    He had seen the nurse leave a few moments earlier. Now curiosity drove him toward the door. He cast a peep inside. The room was dusky, for heavy curtains were pulled to keep out the sunlight. He inched through without touching the door and entered the room.
    Across the floor, on a bed between sheets of white, lay the thin form of old Lord Henry, who seemed to have left the reckoning of earthly years behind altogether. One of his thin arms lay outside the bedcovers, appearing even whiter to the youngster than the sheet, though not quite so white as what hair he still possessed atop a skull over which the skin seemed to have been stretched more tightly than seemed comfortable.
    With eyes wide in fascinated awe, the boy crept forward, unable to keep the verses out of his head that Charlie had repeated to him only yesterday:
    Look where you go, watch what you do,
    or Lord Henry will snatch and make you a stew.
    He’ll cut you in pieces, like he did that night
    when his poor Eliza screamed out in such fright.
    With his own hand he killed her, or so they say,
    and began to go batty the very next day.
    It will happen to you, no one will hear your call,
    if you venture too close to Heathersleigh Hall.
    He reached the bedside and gazed down upon the white face. No expression on the countenance indicated that life still existed inside him. All the rumors about his grandfather, along with the words of the spooky poem, went through the boy’s brain as he stared at the bed with heart pounding.
    Suddenly both the old man’s eyelashes fluttered and twitched, as if his eyes were rolling about inside their sockets.
    In panic the boy tried to flee. But his feet remained nailed to the floor. The ancient eyes opened, as if the sense of presence beside the bed had awakened him. He