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At last he replies: “It is charming, as you say, Mr. Reginald Westcar.” “You know me?” I exclaim, in astonishment. “Pardon me, I can scarcely claim a personal acquaintance. But yours is the only English name entered to-day in the Livre des Étrangers.” “You are staying at the Hôtel de la Concorde, then?” An inclination of the head is all the answer vouchsafed.
It was Agnes’ handwriting. It said: “DEAR MR. WESTCAR: Pray come up here, if you possibly can. I cannot understand what is the matter with papa; and he wishes me to do a dreadful thing. Do come. I feel that I have no friend but you. I am obliged to send this note privately.” I need scarcely say that five minutes afterward I was plunging through the snow toward The Mere.
Horror-struck, I gazed at the apparition; it advanced a little—the lips moved—I heard it distinctly say: “Reginald Westcar, The Mere belongs to you. Compel John Maryon to pay the debt of honor!” I fell back senseless. When next I returned to consciousness, it was when I was called in the morning; the shutters were opened, and I saw the red light of the dawning winter sun.
The last section of the Westcar Papyrus deals with the birth of the three sons of Rā, who have been mentioned above.
“But kindly meant. You will not sleep less soundly for acting on that impulse, Reginald Westcar.” He rises as he speaks. He throws his cloak round him, and stands motionless. I take the hint. My mysterious countryman wishes to be alone. Some one that he has loved and lost lies buried here.
This papyrus was the property of Miss Westcar of Whitchurch, who gave it to the eminent German Egyptologist, Richard Lepsius, in 1839; it was written probably at some period between the twelfth and eighteenth dynasties. The texts were first edited and translated by Professor Erman. The first story describes an event which happened in the reign of Nebka, a king of the third dynasty.
The tales or the magicians are only preserved in a single copy, and of that the beginning is entirely lost. The papyrus was brought from Egypt by an English traveller, and was purchased by the Berlin Museum from the property of Lepsius, who had received it from the owner, Miss Westcar: hence it is known as the Westcar papyrus.
Better, I was told, but unable to see any one. Miss Maryon, too, was fatigued with nursing her father. So there was nothing to do but to trudge home again. “Reginald Westcar, The Mere is yours. Compel John Maryon to pay the debt of honor!” Again and again these words forced themselves upon me, as I listlessly gazed out upon the white landscape.
But the memory of my crime haunted me as only such memories can haunt a criminal, and I became a morose and miserable man. One thing bound me to life—my daughter. When Reginald Westcar appeared upon the scene I thought that the debt of honor would be satisfied if he married Agnes. Then Bludyer reappeared, and he told me that he knew that I had killed you.
“But you have never died, Reginald Westcar. You know nothing of the sleep of death.” For the third time he speaks my name almost familiarly, and—I know not why—a shudder passes through me. I have no time, in my turn, to ask him what he means; for he strides silently away into the shadow of the church, and I, with a strange sense of oppression upon me, returned to my hotel.
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