Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/19

 challenged Marcellus Clarke. But the interview only returned Lucas to St. Florentin without new information and more disturbed and uneasy than before. The house on the island fastened itself definitely upon Lucas Cullen as an ill omen. For months he would avoid mentioning it, avoid gazing toward it, avoid even the shores opposite; then he would speak of it in some manner every day—and at almost every hour of each day—to his wife or his servants. He would sit in his upper window, gazing from the hilltop over the trees to the Isle de la Resurrection; or he would wander down to the shore and stare and consider and stare. The thing obsessed him. He was an old man now, over seventy, but hardy and strong, clear of eye, steady of hand, vindictive and merciless yet to all who opposed him. In all his long, violent life, no one—and nothing—was known to have shaken him until some one, without reason, raised that house on the islet locally known as Resurrection Rock and left the house in Lucas Cullen's sight, closed and untenanted.