A New Dawn Over Devon Read Online Free PDF Page B

spied a form, yet knew it not as his grandson from London. His pupils widened and locked on to those of the boy, which returned their gaze with mute terror.
    Suddenly the thin arm shot from the bed. The grip of ancient fingers closed around the youngster’s arm with a strength they had not exercised in years.
    In abject horror, the boy’s heart pounded like a drum.
    â€œCynthia . . . my dear young Cynthia,” he whispered, “—you’ve come back, just like I prayed you would. We’ll set all right now—”
    He closed his eyes and relaxed a moment to draw in a breath.
    â€œI . . . I was a fool . . .” he tried to begin again, “. . . they were terrible times . . . I had to protect . . . they tried to take the Hall . . . it was your mother . . . if she had only—”
    Suddenly light blazed into the room.
    â€œGiffy!” cried the nurse, bounding through the door. “What are you doing bothering your grandfather?”
    â€œI . . . I only came in for a look,” stammered the boy.
    â€œDon’t you know he mustn’t be disturbed!” she reproached, hurrying toward the bedside. “You stay with Charlie, do you hear!”
    She took hold of the thin ancient hand, unwrapped its fingers from the boy’s arm, and laid it at his side on the bed.
    While the fussy nurse attended to him, chastising herself for her carelessness, the boy crept silently out, the possessor of a secret whose significance he was as unaware of as what the old man’s strange words might mean. The shock of seeing the dying man pushed the odd words for some time from his mind.
    Henry Rutherford died later that same night, speaking not another word to a living soul.
    â€”———
    As the years passed, along with wealth accumulated in the business world, the words he had heard as a boy, mingled with the expressed dissatisfaction of his father, Albert, continued to haunt Gifford Rutherford with the fixation of somehow laying claim to the estate where his cousin Charles rose not only to become lord of the manor but also a highly respected member of Parliament and a knight of the realm.
    Gifford was indeed of Rutherford blood. But whereas his cousin eventually manifested the spiritual inclinations of old Jeremiah, Gifford’s bent was more reminiscent of Broughton and Henry.
    Gifford passed on both his character and his greed to his only son, Geoffrey, who came close to stumbling on the key to the secret his father had nearly uncovered as a boy. During a visit of the London Rutherfords to Heathersleigh Hall in 1899, Geoffrey found himself locked in the northeast tower of the Hall as a prank at the hands of his cousin Amanda. Though terrified, the boy accidentally dislodged a loose stone in the wall, finding concealed behind it an ancient key ring. It contained that which would have enabled him to escape the tower through a secret wall-door, by means of a lock hidden behind a small sliding panel of stone, and thus turn the tables on Amanda for good. It also held a tiny key placed on the ring by none other than Orelia Moylan. It was a key which opened more than even Orelia herself knew about, for her father had been shrewd in the matter of the most secretive of all chambers he had been hired to build.
    Alas, young Geoffrey was only eight. It did not occur to him that he held in his chubby hand that which, had he known where to locate the secretary to which the key belonged, as well as where to insert it, would have uncovered exactly what his father lusted for.
    Therefore he trousered the keys, and neither he nor his father was any nearer the root of things when they left that day than when they came.
    And though the elder of the banker Rutherfords continued curious through the years about the missing family Bible, and set stealthy inquiries afoot to steal it out of the Hall, it continued to gather