Title: Dracula's Guest
Author: Stoker, Bram, 1847-1912
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Dracula's Guest" ***


      +------------------------------------------------------+
      | Transcriber's Note:                                  |
      |                                                      |
      | Inconsistent hyphenation and unusual spelling in the |
      | original document have been preserved.               |
      |                                                      |
      +------------------------------------------------------+



DRACULA'S GUEST

by

BRAM STOKER

First published 1914



To

MY SON



CONTENTS


     Dracula's Guest                                  9
     The Judge's House                               26
     The Squaw                                       50
     The Secret of the Growing Gold                  67
     The Gipsy Prophecy                              84
     The Coming of Abel Behenna                      96
     The Burial of the Rats                         120
     A Dream of Red Hands                           152
     Crooken Sands                                  165



PREFACE


A few months before the lamented death of my husband--I might say even
as the shadow of death was over him--he planned three series of short
stories for publication, and the present volume is one of them. To his
original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto
unpublished episode from _Dracula_. It was originally excised owing to
the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers
of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work. The other
stories have already been published in English and American
periodicals. Had my husband lived longer, he might have seen fit to
revise this work, which is mainly from the earlier years of his
strenuous life. But, as fate has entrusted to me the issuing of it, I
consider it fitting and proper to let it go forth practically as it
was left by him.

                         FLORENCE BRAM STOKER



Dracula's Guest


When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich,
and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we
were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d'hôtel of the Quatre
Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage
and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still
holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door:

'Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is
a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But
I am sure you will not be late.' Here he smiled, and added, 'for you
know what night it is.'

Johann answered with an emphatic, 'Ja, mein Herr,' and, touching his
hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after
signalling to him to stop:

'Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?'

He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: 'Walpurgis nacht.'
Then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing
as big as a turnip, and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered
together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realised
that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the
unnecessary delay, and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning
him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost
time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and
sniffed the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round
in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of
high, wind-swept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but
little used, and which seemed to dip through a little, winding valley.
It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I
called Johann to stop--and when he had pulled up, I told him I would
like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses, and
frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This somewhat piqued my
curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered fencingly,
and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest. Finally I said:

'Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to
come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is
all I ask.' For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so
quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands
appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There was just enough of
English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his
talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something--the very idea
of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up,
saying, as he crossed himself: 'Walpurgis-Nacht!'

I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man
when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with
him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and
broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native
tongue--and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the
horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale,
and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward,
took them by the bridles and led them on some twenty feet. I followed,
and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed
to the spot we had left and drew his carriage in the direction of the
other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in
English: 'Buried him--him what killed themselves.'

I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross-roads: 'Ah! I
see, a suicide. How interesting!' But for the life of me I could not
make out why the horses were frightened.

Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a
bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took
Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said, 'It sounds
like a wolf--but yet there are no wolves here now.'

'No?' I said, questioning him; 'isn't it long since the wolves were so
near the city?'

'Long, long,' he answered, 'in the spring and summer; but with the
snow the wolves have been here not so long.'

Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds
drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath
of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however,
and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out
brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and
said:

'The storm of snow, he comes before long time.' Then he looked at his
watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly--for the horses
were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads--he
climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our
journey.

I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.

'Tell me,' I said, 'about this place where the road leads,' and I
pointed down.

Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered, 'It
is unholy.'

'What is unholy?' I enquired.

'The village.'

'Then there is a village?'

'No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years.' My curiosity was
piqued, 'But you said there was a village.'

'There was.'

'Where is it now?'

Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so
mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but
roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died
there and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under the
clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy
with life, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save
their lives (aye, and their souls!--and here he crossed himself) those
who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and
the dead were dead and not--not something. He was evidently afraid to
speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more
and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him,
and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear--white-faced, perspiring,
trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful
presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the
open plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried:

'Walpurgis nacht!' and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All
my English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:

'You are afraid, Johann--you are afraid. Go home; I shall return
alone; the walk will do me good.' The carriage door was open. I took
from the seat my oak walking-stick--which I always carry on my holiday
excursions--and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said,
'Go home, Johann--Walpurgis-nacht doesn't concern Englishmen.'

The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to
hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so
foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was deeply in earnest; but all
the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In
his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me
understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native
German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction,
'Home!' I turned to go down the cross-road into the valley.

With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I
leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road
for a while: then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and
thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the
horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror.
Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away
madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger, but
I found that he, too, was gone.

With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening
valley to which Johann had objected. There was not the slightest
reason, that I could see, for his objection; and I daresay I tramped
for a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance, and
certainly without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was
concerned, it was desolation itself. But I did not notice this
particularly till, on turning a bend in the road, I came upon a
scattered fringe of wood; then I recognised that I had been impressed
unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which I had
passed.

I sat down to rest myself, and began to look around. It struck me that
it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my
walk--a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me, with, now and
then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking upwards I noticed
that great thick clouds were drifting rapidly across the sky from
North to South at a great height. There were signs of coming storm in
some lofty stratum of the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking
that it was the sitting still after the exercise of walking, I resumed
my journey.

The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque. There were no
striking objects that the eye might single out; but in all there was a
charm of beauty. I took little heed of time and it was only when the
deepening twilight forced itself upon me that I began to think of how
I should find my way home. The brightness of the day had gone. The air
was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked.
They were accompanied by a sort of far-away rushing sound, through
which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver
had said came from a wolf. For a while I hesitated. I had said I would
see the deserted village, so on I went, and presently came on a wide
stretch of open country, shut in by hills all around. Their sides were
covered with trees which spread down to the plain, dotting, in clumps,
the gentler slopes and hollows which showed here and there. I followed
with my eye the winding of the road, and saw that it curved close to
one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it.

As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to
fall. I thought of the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed,
and then hurried on to seek the shelter of the wood in front. Darker
and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till
the earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the
further edge of which was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here
but crude, and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked, as
when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found
that I must have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard
surface, and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind
grew stronger and blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to
run before it. The air became icy-cold, and in spite of my exercise I
began to suffer. The snow was now falling so thickly and whirling
around me in such rapid eddies that I could hardly keep my eyes open.
Every now and then the heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning,
and in the flashes I could see ahead of me a great mass of trees,
chiefly yew and cypress all heavily coated with snow.

I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there, in comparative
silence, I could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently
the blackness of the storm had become merged in the darkness of the
night. By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away: it now only came
in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the
wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.

Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud, came a
straggling ray of moonlight, which lit up the expanse, and showed me
that I was at the edge of a dense mass of cypress and yew trees. As
the snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter and began
to investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many
old foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house
in which, though in ruins, I could find some sort of shelter for a
while. As I skirted the edge of the copse, I found that a low wall
encircled it, and following this I presently found an opening. Here
the cypresses formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind
of building. Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting
clouds obscured the moon, and I passed up the path in darkness. The
wind must have grown colder, for I felt myself shiver as I walked; but
there was hope of shelter, and I groped my way blindly on.

I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed;
and, perhaps in sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to
cease to beat. But this was only momentarily; for suddenly the
moonlight broke through the clouds, showing me that I was in a
graveyard, and that the square object before me was a great massive
tomb of marble, as white as the snow that lay on and all around it.
With the moonlight there came a fierce sigh of the storm, which
appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many dogs
or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and felt the cold perceptibly grow
upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. Then while the flood
of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb, the storm gave further
evidence of renewing, as though it was returning on its track.
Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the sepulchre to
see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such a place. I
walked around it, and read, over the Doric door, in German:

               COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
                        IN STYRIA
                 SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
                          1801

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble--for
the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone--was a great
iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great
Russian letters:

          'The dead travel fast.'

There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it
gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the
first time, that I had taken Johann's advice. Here a thought struck
me, which came under almost mysterious circumstances and with a
terrible shock. This was Walpurgis Night!

Walpurgis Night, when, according to the belief of millions of people,
the devil was abroad--when the graves were opened and the dead came
forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held
revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the
depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide lay;
and this was the place where I was alone--unmanned, shivering with
cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It
took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, all my
courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.

And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though
thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore
on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such
violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic
slingers--hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the
shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were
standing-corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree; but I
was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford
refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching
against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of
protection from the beating of the hailstones, for now they only drove
against me as they ricocheted from the ground and the side of the
marble.

As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards.
The shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that pitiless tempest, and I
was about to enter it when there came a flash of forked-lightning that
lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a
living man, I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the
tomb, a beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly
sleeping on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by
the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm. The whole thing was
so sudden that, before I could realise the shock, moral as well as
physical, I found the hailstones beating me down. At the same time I
had a strange, dominating feeling that I was not alone. I looked
towards the tomb. Just then there came another blinding flash, which
seemed to strike the iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour
through to the earth, blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst
of flame. The dead woman rose for a moment of agony, while she was
lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was drowned in the
thundercrash. The last thing I heard was this mingling of dreadful
sound, as again I was seized in the giant-grasp and dragged away,
while the hailstones beat on me, and the air around seemed reverberant
with the howling of wolves. The last sight that I remembered was a
vague, white, moving mass, as if all the graves around me had sent out
the phantoms of their sheeted-dead, and that they were closing in on
me through the white cloudiness of the driving hail.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of consciousness; then
a sense of weariness that was dreadful. For a time I remembered
nothing; but slowly my senses returned. My feet seemed positively
racked with pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed.
There was an icy feeling at the back of my neck and all down my spine,
and my ears, like my feet, were dead, yet in torment; but there was in
my breast a sense of warmth which was, by comparison, delicious. It
was as a nightmare--a physical nightmare, if one may use such an
expression; for some heavy weight on my chest made it difficult for me
to breathe.

This period of semi-lethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it
faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing,
like the first stage of sea-sickness, and a wild desire to be free
from something--I knew not what. A vast stillness enveloped me, as
though all the world were asleep or dead--only broken by the low
panting as of some animal close to me. I felt a warm rasping at my
throat, then came a consciousness of the awful truth, which chilled me
to the heart and sent the blood surging up through my brain. Some
great animal was lying on me and now licking my throat. I feared to
stir, for some instinct of prudence bade me lie still; but the brute
seemed to realise that there was now some change in me, for it raised
its head. Through my eyelashes I saw above me the two great flaming
eyes of a gigantic wolf. Its sharp white teeth gleamed in the gaping
red mouth, and I could feel its hot breath fierce and acrid upon me.

For another spell of time I remembered no more. Then I became
conscious of a low growl, followed by a yelp, renewed again and again.
Then, seemingly very far away, I heard a 'Holloa! holloa!' as of many
voices calling in unison. Cautiously I raised my head and looked in
the direction whence the sound came; but the cemetery blocked my view.
The wolf still continued to yelp in a strange way, and a red glare
began to move round the grove of cypresses, as though following the
sound. As the voices drew closer, the wolf yelped faster and louder. I
feared to make either sound or motion. Nearer came the red glow, over
the white pall which stretched into the darkness around me. Then all
at once from beyond the trees there came at a trot a troop of horsemen
bearing torches. The wolf rose from my breast and made for the
cemetery. I saw one of the horsemen (soldiers by their caps and their
long military cloaks) raise his carbine and take aim. A companion
knocked up his arm, and I heard the ball whizz over my head. He had
evidently taken my body for that of the wolf. Another sighted the
animal as it slunk away, and a shot followed. Then, at a gallop, the
troop rode forward--some towards me, others following the wolf as it
disappeared amongst the snow-clad cypresses.

As they drew nearer I tried to move, but was powerless, although I
could see and hear all that went on around me. Two or three of the
soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt beside me. One of them
raised my head, and placed his hand over my heart.

'Good news, comrades!' he cried. 'His heart still beats!'

Then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigour into me, and
I was able to open my eyes fully and look around. Lights and shadows
were moving among the trees, and I heard men call to one another. They
drew together, uttering frightened exclamations; and the lights
flashed as the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like
men possessed. When the further ones came close to us, those who were
around me asked them eagerly:

'Well, have you found him?'

The reply rang out hurriedly:

'No! no! Come away quick--quick! This is no place to stay, and on this
of all nights!'

'What was it?' was the question, asked in all manner of keys. The
answer came variously and all indefinitely as though the men were
moved by some common impulse to speak, yet were restrained by some
common fear from giving their thoughts.

'It--it--indeed!' gibbered one, whose wits had plainly given out for
the moment.

'A wolf--and yet not a wolf!' another put in shudderingly.

'No use trying for him without the sacred bullet,' a third remarked in
a more ordinary manner.

'Serve us right for coming out on this night! Truly we have earned
our thousand marks!' were the ejaculations of a fourth.

'There was blood on the broken marble,' another said after a
pause--'the lightning never brought that there. And for him--is he
safe? Look at his throat! See, comrades, the wolf has been lying on
him and keeping his blood warm.'

The officer looked at my throat and replied:

'He is all right; the skin is not pierced. What does it all mean? We
should never have found him but for the yelping of the wolf.'

'What became of it?' asked the man who was holding up my head, and who
seemed the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were
steady and without tremor. On his sleeve was the chevron of a petty
officer.

'It went to its home,' answered the man, whose long face was pallid,
and who actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully.
'There are graves enough there in which it may lie. Come,
comrades--come quickly! Let us leave this cursed spot.'

The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of
command; then several men placed me upon a horse. He sprang to the
saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance; and,
turning our faces away from the cypresses, we rode away in swift,
military order.

As yet my tongue refused its office, and I was perforce silent. I must
have fallen asleep; for the next thing I remembered was finding myself
standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. It was almost
broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was
reflected, like a path of blood, over the waste of snow. The officer
was telling the men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that
they found an English stranger, guarded by a large dog.

'Dog! that was no dog,' cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. 'I
think I know a wolf when I see one.'

The young officer answered calmly: 'I said a dog.'

'Dog!' reiterated the other ironically. It was evident that his
courage was rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, 'Look
at his throat. Is that the work of a dog, master?'

Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touched it I
cried out in pain. The men crowded round to look, some stooping down
from their saddles; and again there came the calm voice of the young
officer:

'A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be laughed
at.'

I was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs
of Munich. Here we came across a stray carriage, into which I was
lifted, and it was driven off to the Quatre Saisons--the young officer
accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse, and the
others rode off to their barracks.

When we arrived, Herr Delbrück rushed so quickly down the steps to
meet me, that it was apparent he had been watching within. Taking me
by both hands he solicitously led me in. The officer saluted me and
was turning to withdraw, when I recognised his purpose, and insisted
that he should come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked
him and his brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he
was more than glad, and that Herr Delbrück had at the first taken
steps to make all the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous
utterance the maître d'hôtel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty
and withdrew.

'But Herr Delbrück,' I enquired, 'how and why was it that the soldiers
searched for me?'

He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as
he replied:

'I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the
regiment in which I served, to ask for volunteers.'

'But how did you know I was lost?' I asked.

'The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had
been upset when the horses ran away.'

'But surely you would not send a search-party of soldiers merely on
this account?'

'Oh, no!' he answered; 'but even before the coachman arrived, I had
this telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are,' and he took from
his pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and I read:


                                                 _Bistritz_.

     Be careful of my guest--his safety is most precious to me.
     Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing
     to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore
     adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and
     night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer
     your zeal with my fortune.--_Dracula_.

As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me;
and, if the attentive maître d'hôtel had not caught me, I think I
should have fallen. There was something so strange in all this,
something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a
sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces--the mere
vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly
under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had
come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the
danger of the snow-sleep and the jaws of the wolf.



The Judge's House


When the time for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up
his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions
of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of
old he knew it charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious
little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained
from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that
each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where
he had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he
had no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends'
friends, and so he determined to look out for a place for himself. He
packed a portmanteau with some clothes and all the books he required,
and then took ticket for the first name on the local time-table which
he did not know.

When at the end of three hours' journey he alighted at Benchurch, he
felt satisfied that he had so far obliterated his tracks as to be sure
of having a peaceful opportunity of pursuing his studies. He went
straight to the one inn which the sleepy little place contained, and
put up for the night. Benchurch was a market town, and once in three
weeks was crowded to excess, but for the remainder of the twenty-one
days it was as attractive as a desert, Malcolmson looked around the
day after his arrival to try to find quarters more isolated than even
so quiet an inn as 'The Good Traveller' afforded. There was only one
place which took his fancy, and it certainly satisfied his wildest
ideas regarding quiet; in fact, quiet was not the proper word to apply
to it--desolation was the only term conveying any suitable idea of its
isolation. It was an old rambling, heavy-built house of the Jacobean
style, with heavy gables and windows, unusually small, and set higher
than was customary in such houses, and was surrounded with a high
brick wall massively built. Indeed, on examination, it looked more
like a fortified house than an ordinary dwelling. But all these things
pleased Malcolmson. 'Here,' he thought, 'is the very spot I have been
looking for, and if I can get opportunity of using it I shall be
happy.' His joy was increased when he realised beyond doubt that it
was not at present inhabited.

From the post-office he got the name of the agent, who was rarely
surprised at the application to rent a part of the old house. Mr.
Carnford, the local lawyer and agent, was a genial old gentleman, and
frankly confessed his delight at anyone being willing to live in the
house.

'To tell you the truth,' said he, 'I should be only too happy, on
behalf of the owners, to let anyone have the house rent free for a
term of years if only to accustom the people here to see it inhabited.
It has been so long empty that some kind of absurd prejudice has grown
up about it, and this can be best put down by its occupation--if
only,' he added with a sly glance at Malcolmson, 'by a scholar like
yourself, who wants its quiet for a time.'

Malcolmson thought it needless to ask the agent about the 'absurd
prejudice'; he knew he would get more information, if he should
require it, on that subject from other quarters. He paid his three
months' rent, got a receipt, and the name of an old woman who would
probably undertake to 'do' for him, and came away with the keys in his
pocket. He then went to the landlady of the inn, who was a cheerful
and most kindly person, and asked her advice as to such stores and
provisions as he would be likely to require. She threw up her hands in
amazement when he told her where he was going to settle himself.

'Not in the Judge's House!' she said, and grew pale as she spoke. He
explained the locality of the house, saying that he did not know its
name. When he had finished she answered:

'Aye, sure enough--sure enough the very place! It is the Judge's House
sure enough.' He asked her to tell him about the place, why so called,
and what there was against it. She told him that it was so called
locally because it had been many years before--how long she could not
say, as she was herself from another part of the country, but she
thought it must have been a hundred years or more--the abode of a
judge who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences
and his hostility to prisoners at Assizes. As to what there was
against the house itself she could not tell. She had often asked, but
no one could inform her; but there was a general feeling that there
was _something_, and for her own part she would not take all the money
in Drinkwater's Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself. Then
she apologised to Malcolmson for her disturbing talk.

'It is too bad of me, sir, and you--and a young gentlemen, too--if you
will pardon me saying it, going to live there all alone. If you were
my boy--and you'll excuse me for saying it--you wouldn't sleep there a
night, not if I had to go there myself and pull the big alarm bell
that's on the roof!' The good creature was so manifestly in earnest,
and was so kindly in her intentions, that Malcolmson, although amused,
was touched. He told her kindly how much he appreciated her interest
in him, and added:

'But, my dear Mrs. Witham, indeed you need not be concerned about me!
A man who is reading for the Mathematical Tripos has too much to think
of to be disturbed by any of these mysterious "somethings", and his
work is of too exact and prosaic a kind to allow of his having any
corner in his mind for mysteries of any kind. Harmonical Progression,
Permutations and Combinations, and Elliptic Functions have sufficient
mysteries for me!' Mrs. Witham kindly undertook to see after his
commissions, and he went himself to look for the old woman who had
been recommended to him. When he returned to the Judge's House with
her, after an interval of a couple of hours, he found Mrs. Witham
herself waiting with several men and boys carrying parcels, and an
upholsterer's man with a bed in a car, for she said, though tables and
chairs might be all very well, a bed that hadn't been aired for mayhap
fifty years was not proper for young bones to lie on. She was
evidently curious to see the inside of the house; and though
manifestly so afraid of the 'somethings' that at the slightest sound
she clutched on to Malcolmson, whom she never left for a moment, went
over the whole place.

After his examination of the house, Malcolmson decided to take up his
abode in the great dining-room, which was big enough to serve for all
his requirements; and Mrs. Witham, with the aid of the charwoman,
Mrs. Dempster, proceeded to arrange matters. When the hampers were
brought in and unpacked, Malcolmson saw that with much kind
forethought she had sent from her own kitchen sufficient provisions to
last for a few days. Before going she expressed all sorts of kind
wishes; and at the door turned and said:

'And perhaps, sir, as the room is big and draughty it might be well to
have one of those big screens put round your bed at night--though,
truth to tell, I would die myself if I were to be so shut in with all
kinds of--of "things", that put their heads round the sides, or over
the top, and look on me!' The image which she had called up was too
much for her nerves, and she fled incontinently.

Mrs. Dempster sniffed in a superior manner as the landlady
disappeared, and remarked that for her own part she wasn't afraid of
all the bogies in the kingdom.

'I'll tell you what it is, sir,' she said; 'bogies is all kinds and
sorts of things--except bogies! Rats and mice, and beetles; and creaky
doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles,
that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of
the night. Look at the wainscot of the room! It is old--hundreds of
years old! Do you think there's no rats and beetles there! And do you
imagine, sir, that you won't see none of them? Rats is bogies, I tell
you, and bogies is rats; and don't you get to think anything else!'

'Mrs. Dempster,' said Malcolmson gravely, making her a polite bow,
'you know more than a Senior Wrangler! And let me say, that, as a mark
of esteem for your indubitable soundness of head and heart, I shall,
when I go, give you possession of this house, and let you stay here by
yourself for the last two months of my tenancy, for four weeks will
serve my purpose.'

'Thank you kindly, sir!' she answered, 'but I couldn't sleep away
from home a night. I am in Greenhow's Charity, and if I slept a night
away from my rooms I should lose all I have got to live on. The rules
is very strict; and there's too many watching for a vacancy for me to
run any risks in the matter. Only for that, sir, I'd gladly come here
and attend on you altogether during your stay.'

'My good woman,' said Malcolmson hastily, 'I have come here on purpose
to obtain solitude; and believe me that I am grateful to the late
Greenhow for having so organised his admirable charity--whatever it
is--that I am perforce denied the opportunity of suffering from such a
form of temptation! Saint Anthony himself could not be more rigid on
the point!'

The old woman laughed harshly. 'Ah, you young gentlemen,' she said,
'you don't fear for naught; and belike you'll get all the solitude you
want here.' She set to work with her cleaning; and by nightfall, when
Malcolmson returned from his walk--he always had one of his books to
study as he walked--he found the room swept and tidied, a fire burning
in the old hearth, the lamp lit, and the table spread for supper with
Mrs. Witham's excellent fare. 'This is comfort, indeed,' he said, as
he rubbed his hands.

When he had finished his supper, and lifted the tray to the other end
of the great oak dining-table, he got out his books again, put fresh
wood on the fire, trimmed his lamp, and set himself down to a spell of
real hard work. He went on without pause till about eleven o'clock,
when he knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp, and to make
himself a cup of tea. He had always been a tea-drinker, and during his
college life had sat late at work and had taken tea late. The rest
was a great luxury to him, and he enjoyed it with a sense of
delicious, voluptuous ease. The renewed fire leaped and sparkled, and
threw quaint shadows through the great old room; and as he sipped his
hot tea he revelled in the sense of isolation from his kind. Then it
was that he began to notice for the first time what a noise the rats
were making.

'Surely,' he thought, 'they cannot have been at it all the time I was
reading. Had they been, I must have noticed it!' Presently, when the
noise increased, he satisfied himself that it was really new. It was
evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of
a stranger, and the light of fire and lamp; but that as the time went
on they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was
their wont.

How busy they were! and hark to the strange noises! Up and down behind
the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and
gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to
mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, 'Bogies is rats, and rats is
bogies!' The tea began to have its effect of intellectual and nervous
stimulus, he saw with joy another long spell of work to be done before
the night was past, and in the sense of security which it gave him, he
allowed himself the luxury of a good look round the room. He took his
lamp in one hand, and went all around, wondering that so quaint and
beautiful an old house had been so long neglected. The carving of the
oak on the panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the doors
and windows it was beautiful and of rare merit. There were some old
pictures on the walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and
dirt that he could not distinguish any detail of them, though he held
his lamp as high as he could over his head. Here and there as he went
round he saw some crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a
rat with its bright eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it
was gone, and a squeak and a scamper followed. The thing that most
struck him, however, was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof,
which hung down in a corner of the room on the right-hand side of the
fireplace. He pulled up close to the hearth a great high-backed carved
oak chair, and sat down to his last cup of tea. When this was done he
made up the fire, and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of
the table, having the fire to his left. For a little while the rats
disturbed him somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got
accustomed to the noise as one does to the ticking of a clock or to
the roar of moving water; and he became so immersed in his work that
everything in the world, except the problem which he was trying to
solve, passed away from him.

He suddenly looked up, his problem was still unsolved, and there was
in the air that sense of the hour before the dawn, which is so dread
to doubtful life. The noise of the rats had ceased. Indeed it seemed
to him that it must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden
cessation which had disturbed him. The fire had fallen low, but still
it threw out a deep red glow. As he looked he started in spite of his
_sang froid_.

There on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of
the fireplace sat an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with
baleful eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it
did not stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it
did not stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel
eyes shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness.

Malcolmson felt amazed, and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at
it to kill it. Before, however, he could strike it, the rat, with a
squeak that sounded like the concentration of hate, jumped upon the
floor, and, running up the rope of the alarm bell, disappeared in the
darkness beyond the range of the green-shaded lamp. Instantly, strange
to say, the noisy scampering of the rats in the wainscot began again.

By this time Malcolmson's mind was quite off the problem; and as a
shrill cock-crow outside told him of the approach of morning, he went
to bed and to sleep.

He slept so sound that he was not even waked by Mrs. Dempster coming
in to make up his room. It was only when she had tidied up the place
and got his breakfast ready and tapped on the screen which closed in
his bed that he woke. He was a little tired still after his night's
hard work, but a strong cup of tea soon freshened him up and, taking
his book, he went out for his morning walk, bringing with him a few
sandwiches lest he should not care to return till dinner time. He
found a quiet walk between high elms some way outside the town, and
here he spent the greater part of the day studying his Laplace. On his
return he looked in to see Mrs. Witham and to thank her for her
kindness. When she saw him coming through the diamond-paned bay window
of her sanctum she came out to meet him and asked him in. She looked
at him searchingly and shook her head as she said:

'You must not overdo it, sir. You are paler this morning than you
should be. Too late hours and too hard work on the brain isn't good
for any man! But tell me, sir, how did you pass the night? Well, I
hope? But my heart! sir, I was glad when Mrs. Dempster told me this
morning that you were all right and sleeping sound when she went in.'

'Oh, I was all right,' he answered smiling, 'the "somethings" didn't
worry me, as yet. Only the rats; and they had a circus, I tell you,
all over the place. There was one wicked looking old devil that sat up
on my own chair by the fire, and wouldn't go till I took the poker to
him, and then he ran up the rope of the alarm bell and got to
somewhere up the wall or the ceiling--I couldn't see where, it was so
dark.'

'Mercy on us,' said Mrs. Witham, 'an old devil, and sitting on a chair
by the fireside! Take care, sir! take care! There's many a true word
spoken in jest.'

'How do you mean? Pon my word I don't understand.'

'An old devil! The old devil, perhaps. There! sir, you needn't laugh,'
for Malcolmson had broken into a hearty peal. 'You young folks thinks
it easy to laugh at things that makes older ones shudder. Never mind,
sir! never mind! Please God, you'll laugh all the time. It's what I
wish you myself!' and the good lady beamed all over in sympathy with
his enjoyment, her fears gone for a moment.

'Oh, forgive me!' said Malcolmson presently. 'Don't think me rude; but
the idea was too much for me--that the old devil himself was on the
chair last night!' And at the thought he laughed again. Then he went
home to dinner.

This evening the scampering of the rats began earlier; indeed it had
been going on before his arrival, and only ceased whilst his presence
by its freshness disturbed them. After dinner he sat by the fire for a
while and had a smoke; and then, having cleared his table, began to
work as before. Tonight the rats disturbed him more than they had done
on the previous night. How they scampered up and down and under and
over! How they squeaked, and scratched, and gnawed! How they, getting
bolder by degrees, came to the mouths of their holes and to the chinks
and cracks and crannies in the wainscoting till their eyes shone like
tiny lamps as the firelight rose and fell. But to him, now doubtless
accustomed to them, their eyes were not wicked; only their playfulness
touched him. Sometimes the boldest of them made sallies out on the
floor or along the mouldings of the wainscot. Now and again as they
disturbed him Malcolmson made a sound to frighten them, smiting the
table with his hand or giving a fierce 'Hsh, hsh,' so that they fled
straightway to their holes.

And so the early part of the night wore on; and despite the noise
Malcolmson got more and more immersed in his work.

All at once he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a
sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or
scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the
odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at
the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very odd
sensation thrilled through him.

There, on the great old high-backed carved oak chair beside the
fireplace sat the same enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with
baleful eyes.

Instinctively he took the nearest thing to his hand, a book of
logarithms, and flung it at it. The book was badly aimed and the rat
did not stir, so again the poker performance of the previous night was
repeated; and again the rat, being closely pursued, fled up the rope
of the alarm bell. Strangely too, the departure of this rat was
instantly followed by the renewal of the noise made by the general rat
community. On this occasion, as on the previous one, Malcolmson could
not see at what part of the room the rat disappeared, for the green
shade of his lamp left the upper part of the room in darkness, and the
fire had burned low.

On looking at his watch he found it was close on midnight; and, not
sorry for the _divertissement_, he made up his fire and made himself
his nightly pot of tea. He had got through a good spell of work, and
thought himself entitled to a cigarette; and so he sat on the great
oak chair before the fire and enjoyed it. Whilst smoking he began to
think that he would like to know where the rat disappeared to, for he
had certain ideas for the morrow not entirely disconnected with a
rat-trap. Accordingly he lit another lamp and placed it so that it
would shine well into the right-hand corner of the wall by the
fireplace. Then he got all the books he had with him, and placed them
handy to throw at the vermin. Finally he lifted the rope of the alarm
bell and placed the end of it on the table, fixing the extreme end
under the lamp. As he handled it he could not help noticing how
pliable it was, especially for so strong a rope, and one not in use.
'You could hang a man with it,' he thought to himself. When his
preparations were made he looked around, and said complacently:

'There now, my friend, I think we shall learn something of you this
time!' He began his work again, and though as before somewhat
disturbed at first by the noise of the rats, soon lost himself in his
propositions and problems.

Again he was called to his immediate surroundings suddenly. This time
it might not have been the sudden silence only which took his
attention; there was a slight movement of the rope, and the lamp
moved. Without stirring, he looked to see if his pile of books was
within range, and then cast his eye along the rope. As he looked he
saw the great rat drop from the rope on the oak arm-chair and sit
there glaring at him. He raised a book in his right hand, and taking
careful aim, flung it at the rat. The latter, with a quick movement,
sprang aside and dodged the missile. He then took another book, and a
third, and flung them one after another at the rat, but each time
unsuccessfully. At last, as he stood with a book poised in his hand to
throw, the rat squeaked and seemed afraid. This made Malcolmson more
than ever eager to strike, and the book flew and struck the rat a
resounding blow. It gave a terrified squeak, and turning on his
pursuer a look of terrible malevolence, ran up the chair-back and made
a great jump to the rope of the alarm bell and ran up it like
lightning. The lamp rocked under the sudden strain, but it was a heavy
one and did not topple over. Malcolmson kept his eyes on the rat, and
saw it by the light of the second lamp leap to a moulding of the
wainscot and disappear through a hole in one of the great pictures
which hung on the wall, obscured and invisible through its coating of
dirt and dust.

'I shall look up my friend's habitation in the morning,' said the
student, as he went over to collect his books. 'The third picture from
the fireplace; I shall not forget.' He picked up the books one by one,
commenting on them as he lifted them. '_Conic Sections_ he does not
mind, nor _Cycloidal Oscillations_, nor the _Principia_, nor
_Quaternions_, nor _Thermodynamics_. Now for the book that fetched
him!' Malcolmson took it up and looked at it. As he did so he started,
and a sudden pallor overspread his face. He looked round uneasily and
shivered slightly, as he murmured to himself:

'The Bible my mother gave me! What an odd coincidence.' He sat down to
work again, and the rats in the wainscot renewed their gambols. They
did not disturb him, however; somehow their presence gave him a sense
of companionship. But he could not attend to his work, and after
striving to master the subject on which he was engaged gave it up in
despair, and went to bed as the first streak of dawn stole in through
the eastern window.

He slept heavily but uneasily, and dreamed much; and when Mrs.
Dempster woke him late in the morning he seemed ill at ease, and for a
few minutes did not seem to realise exactly where he was. His first
request rather surprised the servant.

'Mrs. Dempster, when I am out to-day I wish you would get the steps
and dust or wash those pictures--specially that one the third from the
fireplace--I want to see what they are.'

Late in the afternoon Malcolmson worked at his books in the shaded
walk, and the cheerfulness of the previous day came back to him as the
day wore on, and he found that his reading was progressing well. He
had worked out to a satisfactory conclusion all the problems which had
as yet baffled him, and it was in a state of jubilation that he paid a
visit to Mrs. Witham at 'The Good Traveller'. He found a stranger in
the cosy sitting-room with the landlady, who was introduced to him as
Dr. Thornhill. She was not quite at ease, and this, combined with the
doctor's plunging at once into a series of questions, made Malcolmson
come to the conclusion that his presence was not an accident, so
without preliminary he said:

'Dr. Thornhill, I shall with pleasure answer you any question you may
choose to ask me if you will answer me one question first.'

The doctor seemed surprised, but he smiled and answered at once,
'Done! What is it?'

'Did Mrs. Witham ask you to come here and see me and advise me?'

Dr. Thornhill for a moment was taken aback, and Mrs. Witham got fiery
red and turned away; but the doctor was a frank and ready man, and he
answered at once and openly.

'She did: but she didn't intend you to know it. I suppose it was my
clumsy haste that made you suspect. She told me that she did not like
the idea of your being in that house all by yourself, and that she
thought you took too much strong tea. In fact, she wants me to advise
you if possible to give up the tea and the very late hours. I was a
keen student in my time, so I suppose I may take the liberty of a
college man, and without offence, advise you not quite as a stranger.'

Malcolmson with a bright smile held out his hand. 'Shake! as they say
in America,' he said. 'I must thank you for your kindness and Mrs.
Witham too, and your kindness deserves a return on my part. I promise
to take no more strong tea--no tea at all till you let me--and I shall
go to bed tonight at one o'clock at latest. Will that do?'

'Capital,' said the doctor. 'Now tell us all that you noticed in the
old house,' and so Malcolmson then and there told in minute detail all
that had happened in the last two nights. He was interrupted every now
and then by some exclamation from Mrs. Witham, till finally when he
told of the episode of the Bible the landlady's pent-up emotions found
vent in a shriek; and it was not till a stiff glass of brandy and
water had been administered that she grew composed again. Dr.
Thornhill listened with a face of growing gravity, and when the
narrative was complete and Mrs. Witham had been restored he asked:

'The rat always went up the rope of the alarm bell?'

'Always.'

'I suppose you know,' said the Doctor after a pause, 'what the rope
is?'

'No!'

'It is,' said the Doctor slowly, 'the very rope which the hangman used
for all the victims of the Judge's judicial rancour!' Here he was
interrupted by another scream from Mrs. Witham, and steps had to be
taken for her recovery. Malcolmson having looked at his watch, and
found that it was close to his dinner hour, had gone home before her
complete recovery.

When Mrs. Witham was herself again she almost assailed the Doctor with
angry questions as to what he meant by putting such horrible ideas
into the poor young man's mind. 'He has quite enough there already to
upset him,' she added. Dr. Thornhill replied:

'My dear madam, I had a distinct purpose in it! I wanted to draw his
attention to the bell rope, and to fix it there. It may be that he is
in a highly overwrought state, and has been studying too much,
although I am bound to say that he seems as sound and healthy a young
man, mentally and bodily, as ever I saw--but then the rats--and that
suggestion of the devil.' The doctor shook his head and went on. 'I
would have offered to go and stay the first night with him but that I
felt sure it would have been a cause of offence. He may get in the
night some strange fright or hallucination; and if he does I want him
to pull that rope. All alone as he is it will give us warning, and we
may reach him in time to be of service. I shall be sitting up pretty
late tonight and shall keep my ears open. Do not be alarmed if
Benchurch gets a surprise before morning.'

'Oh, Doctor, what do you mean? What do you mean?'

'I mean this; that possibly--nay, more probably--we shall hear the
great alarm bell from the Judge's House tonight,' and the Doctor made
about as effective an exit as could be thought of.

When Malcolmson arrived home he found that it was a little after his
usual time, and Mrs. Dempster had gone away--the rules of Greenhow's
Charity were not to be neglected. He was glad to see that the place
was bright and tidy with a cheerful fire and a well-trimmed lamp. The
evening was colder than might have been expected in April, and a heavy
wind was blowing with such rapidly-increasing strength that there was
every promise of a storm during the night. For a few minutes after his
entrance the noise of the rats ceased; but so soon as they became
accustomed to his presence they began again. He was glad to hear them,
for he felt once more the feeling of companionship in their noise, and
his mind ran back to the strange fact that they only ceased to
manifest themselves when that other--the great rat with the baleful
eyes--came upon the scene. The reading-lamp only was lit and its green
shade kept the ceiling and the upper part of the room in darkness, so
that the cheerful light from the hearth spreading over the floor and
shining on the white cloth laid over the end of the table was warm and
cheery. Malcolmson sat down to his dinner with a good appetite and a
buoyant spirit. After his dinner and a cigarette he sat steadily down
to work, determined not to let anything disturb him, for he remembered
his promise to the doctor, and made up his mind to make the best of
the time at his disposal.

For an hour or so he worked all right, and then his thoughts began to
wander from his books. The actual circumstances around him, the calls
on his physical attention, and his nervous susceptibility were not to
be denied. By this time the wind had become a gale, and the gale a
storm. The old house, solid though it was, seemed to shake to its
foundations, and the storm roared and raged through its many chimneys
and its queer old gables, producing strange, unearthly sounds in the
empty rooms and corridors. Even the great alarm bell on the roof must
have felt the force of the wind, for the rope rose and fell slightly,
as though the bell were moved a little from time to time and the
limber rope fell on the oak floor with a hard and hollow sound.

As Malcolmson listened to it he bethought himself of the doctor's
words, 'It is the rope which the hangman used for the victims of the
Judge's judicial rancour,' and he went over to the corner of the
fireplace and took it in his hand to look at it. There seemed a sort
of deadly interest in it, and as he stood there he lost himself for a
moment in speculation as to who these victims were, and the grim wish
of the Judge to have such a ghastly relic ever under his eyes. As he
stood there the swaying of the bell on the roof still lifted the rope
now and again; but presently there came a new sensation--a sort of
tremor in the rope, as though something was moving along it.

Looking up instinctively Malcolmson saw the great rat coming slowly
down towards him, glaring at him steadily. He dropped the rope and
started back with a muttered curse, and the rat turning ran up the
rope again and disappeared, and at the same instant Malcolmson became
conscious that the noise of the rats, which had ceased for a while,
began again.

All this set him thinking, and it occurred to him that he had not
investigated the lair of the rat or looked at the pictures, as he had
intended. He lit the other lamp without the shade, and, holding it up
went and stood opposite the third picture from the fireplace on the
right-hand side where he had seen the rat disappear on the previous
night.

At the first glance he started back so suddenly that he almost dropped
the lamp, and a deadly pallor overspread his face. His knees shook,
and heavy drops of sweat came on his forehead, and he trembled like an
aspen. But he was young and plucky, and pulled himself together, and
after the pause of a few seconds stepped forward again, raised the
lamp, and examined the picture which had been dusted and washed, and
now stood out clearly.

It was of a judge dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine. His face
was strong and merciless, evil, crafty, and vindictive, with a sensual
mouth, hooked nose of ruddy colour, and shaped like the beak of a bird
of prey. The rest of the face was of a cadaverous colour. The eyes
were of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression.
As he looked at them, Malcolmson grew cold, for he saw there the very
counterpart of the eyes of the great rat. The lamp almost fell from
his hand, he saw the rat with its baleful eyes peering out through the
hole in the corner of the picture, and noted the sudden cessation of
the noise of the other rats. However, he pulled himself together, and
went on with his examination of the picture.

The Judge was seated in a great high-backed carved oak chair, on the
right-hand side of a great stone fireplace where, in the corner, a
rope hung down from the ceiling, its end lying coiled on the floor.
With a feeling of something like horror, Malcolmson recognised the
scene of the room as it stood, and gazed around him in an awestruck
manner as though he expected to find some strange presence behind him.
Then he looked over to the corner of the fireplace--and with a loud
cry he let the lamp fall from his hand.

There, in the Judge's arm-chair, with the rope hanging behind, sat the
rat with the Judge's baleful eyes, now intensified and with a fiendish
leer. Save for the howling of the storm without there was silence.

The fallen lamp recalled Malcolmson to himself. Fortunately it was of
metal, and so the oil was not spilt. However, the practical need of
attending to it settled at once his nervous apprehensions. When he had
turned it out, he wiped his brow and thought for a moment.

'This will not do,' he said to himself. 'If I go on like this I shall
become a crazy fool. This must stop! I promised the doctor I would not
take tea. Faith, he was pretty right! My nerves must have been getting
into a queer state. Funny I did not notice it. I never felt better in
my life. However, it is all right now, and I shall not be such a fool
again.'

Then he mixed himself a good stiff glass of brandy and water and
resolutely sat down to his work.

It was nearly an hour when he looked up from his book, disturbed by
the sudden stillness. Without, the wind howled and roared louder than
ever, and the rain drove in sheets against the windows, beating like
hail on the glass; but within there was no sound whatever save the
echo of the wind as it roared in the great chimney, and now and then a
hiss as a few raindrops found their way down the chimney in a lull of
the storm. The fire had fallen low and had ceased to flame, though it
threw out a red glow. Malcolmson listened attentively, and presently
heard a thin, squeaking noise, very faint. It came from the corner of
the room where the rope hung down, and he thought it was the creaking
of the rope on the floor as the swaying of the bell raised and lowered
it. Looking up, however, he saw in the dim light the great rat
clinging to the rope and gnawing it. The rope was already nearly
gnawed through--he could see the lighter colour where the strands were
laid bare. As he looked the job was completed, and the severed end of
the rope fell clattering on the oaken floor, whilst for an instant the
great rat remained like a knob or tassel at the end of the rope, which
now began to sway to and fro. Malcolmson felt for a moment another
pang of terror as he thought that now the possibility of calling the
outer world to his assistance was cut off, but an intense anger took
its place, and seizing the book he was reading he hurled it at the
rat. The blow was well aimed, but before the missile could reach him
the rat dropped off and struck the floor with a soft thud. Malcolmson
instantly rushed over towards him, but it darted away and disappeared
in the darkness of the shadows of the room. Malcolmson felt that his
work was over for the night, and determined then and there to vary the
monotony of the proceedings by a hunt for the rat, and took off the
green shade of the lamp so as to insure a wider spreading light. As he
did so the gloom of the upper part of the room was relieved, and in
the new flood of light, great by comparison with the previous
darkness, the pictures on the wall stood out boldly. From where he
stood, Malcolmson saw right opposite to him the third picture on the
wall from the right of the fireplace. He rubbed his eyes in surprise,
and then a great fear began to come upon him.

In the centre of the picture was a great irregular patch of brown
canvas, as fresh as when it was stretched on the frame. The background
was as before, with chair and chimney-corner and rope, but the figure
of the Judge had disappeared.

Malcolmson, almost in a chill of horror, turned slowly round, and then
he began to shake and tremble like a man in a palsy. His strength
seemed to have left him, and he was incapable of action or movement,
hardly even of thought. He could only see and hear.

There, on the great high-backed carved oak chair sat the Judge in his
robes of scarlet and ermine, with his baleful eyes glaring
vindictively, and a smile of triumph on the resolute, cruel mouth, as
he lifted with his hands a _black cap_. Malcolmson felt as if the
blood was running from his heart, as one does in moments of prolonged
suspense. There was a singing in his ears. Without, he could hear the
roar and howl of the tempest, and through it, swept on the storm, came
the striking of midnight by the great chimes in the market place. He
stood for a space of time that seemed to him endless still as a
statue, and with wide-open, horror-struck eyes, breathless. As the
clock struck, so the smile of triumph on the Judge's face intensified,
and at the last stroke of midnight he placed the black cap on his
head.

Slowly and deliberately the Judge rose from his chair and picked up
the piece of the rope of the alarm bell which lay on the floor, drew
it through his hands as if he enjoyed its touch, and then deliberately
began to knot one end of it, fashioning it into a noose. This he
tightened and tested with his foot, pulling hard at it till he was
satisfied and then making a running noose of it, which he held in his
hand. Then he began to move along the table on the opposite side to
Malcolmson keeping his eyes on him until he had passed him, when with
a quick movement he stood in front of the door. Malcolmson then began
to feel that he was trapped, and tried to think of what he should do.
There was some fascination in the Judge's eyes, which he never took
off him, and he had, perforce, to look. He saw the Judge
approach--still keeping between him and the door--and raise the noose
and throw it towards him as if to entangle him. With a great effort he
made a quick movement to one side, and saw the rope fall beside him,
and heard it strike the oaken floor. Again the Judge raised the noose
and tried to ensnare him, ever keeping his baleful eyes fixed on him,
and each time by a mighty effort the student just managed to evade it.
So this went on for many times, the Judge seeming never discouraged
nor discomposed at failure, but playing as a cat does with a mouse. At
last in despair, which had reached its climax, Malcolmson cast a quick
glance round him. The lamp seemed to have blazed up, and there was a
fairly good light in the room. At the many rat-holes and in the chinks
and crannies of the wainscot he saw the rats' eyes; and this aspect,
that was purely physical, gave him a gleam of comfort. He looked
around and saw that the rope of the great alarm bell was laden with
rats. Every inch of it was covered with them, and more and more were
pouring through the small circular hole in the ceiling whence it
emerged, so that with their weight the bell was beginning to sway.

Hark! it had swayed till the clapper had touched the bell. The sound
was but a tiny one, but the bell was only beginning to sway, and it
would increase.

At the sound the Judge, who had been keeping his eyes fixed on
Malcolmson, looked up, and a scowl of diabolical anger overspread his
face. His eyes fairly glowed like hot coals, and he stamped his foot
with a sound that seemed to make the house shake. A dreadful peal of
thunder broke overhead as he raised the rope again, whilst the rats
kept running up and down the rope as though working against time. This
time, instead of throwing it, he drew close to his victim, and held
open the noose as he approached. As he came closer there seemed
something paralysing in his very presence, and Malcolmson stood rigid
as a corpse. He felt the Judge's icy fingers touch his throat as he
adjusted the rope. The noose tightened--tightened. Then the Judge,
taking the rigid form of the student in his arms, carried him over and
placed him standing in the oak chair, and stepping up beside him, put
his hand up and caught the end of the swaying rope of the alarm bell.
As he raised his hand the rats fled squeaking, and disappeared through
the hole in the ceiling. Taking the end of the noose which was round
Malcolmson's neck he tied it to the hanging-bell rope, and then
descending pulled away the chair.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the alarm bell of the Judge's House began to sound a crowd soon
assembled. Lights and torches of various kinds appeared, and soon a
silent crowd was hurrying to the spot. They knocked loudly at the
door, but there was no reply. Then they burst in the door, and poured
into the great dining-room, the doctor at the head.

There at the end of the rope of the great alarm bell hung the body of
the student, and on the face of the Judge in the picture was a
malignant smile.



The Squaw


Nurnberg at the time was not so much exploited as it has been since
then. Irving had not been playing _Faust_, and the very name of the
old town was hardly known to the great bulk of the travelling public.
My wife and I being in the second week of our honeymoon, naturally
wanted someone else to join our party, so that when the cheery
stranger, Elias P. Hutcheson, hailing from Isthmian City, Bleeding
Gulch, Maple Tree County, Neb. turned up at the station at Frankfort,
and casually remarked that he was going on to see the most all-fired
old Methuselah of a town in Yurrup, and that he guessed that so much
travelling alone was enough to send an intelligent, active citizen
into the melancholy ward of a daft house, we took the pretty broad
hint and suggested that we should join forces. We found, on comparing
notes afterwards, that we had each intended to speak with some
diffidence or hesitation so as not to appear too eager, such not being
a good compliment to the success of our married life; but the effect
was entirely marred by our both beginning to speak at the same
instant--stopping simultaneously and then going on together again.
Anyhow, no matter how, it was done; and Elias P. Hutcheson became one
of our party. Straightway Amelia and I found the pleasant benefit;
instead of quarrelling, as we had been doing, we found that the
restraining influence of a third party was such that we now took every
opportunity of spooning in odd corners. Amelia declares that ever
since she has, as the result of that experience, advised all her
friends to take a friend on the honeymoon. Well, we 'did' Nurnberg
together, and much enjoyed the racy remarks of our Transatlantic
friend, who, from his quaint speech and his wonderful stock of
adventures, might have stepped out of a novel. We kept for the last
object of interest in the city to be visited the Burg, and on the day
appointed for the visit strolled round the outer wall of the city by
the eastern side.

The Burg is seated on a rock dominating the town and an immensely deep
fosse guards it on the northern side. Nurnberg has been happy in that
it was never sacked; had it been it would certainly not be so spick
and span perfect as it is at present. The ditch has not been used for
centuries, and now its base is spread with tea-gardens and orchards,
of which some of the trees are of quite respectable growth. As we
wandered round the wall, dawdling in the hot July sunshine, we often
paused to admire the views spread before us, and in especial the great
plain covered with towns and villages and bounded with a blue line of
hills, like a landscape of Claude Lorraine. From this we always turned
with new delight to the city itself, with its myriad of quaint old
gables and acre-wide red roofs dotted with dormer windows, tier upon
tier. A little to our right rose the towers of the Burg, and nearer
still, standing grim, the Torture Tower, which was, and is, perhaps,
the most interesting place in the city. For centuries the tradition of
the Iron Virgin of Nurnberg has been handed down as an instance of
the horrors of cruelty of which man is capable; we had long looked
forward to seeing it; and here at last was its home.

In one of our pauses we leaned over the wall of the moat and looked
down. The garden seemed quite fifty or sixty feet below us, and the
sun pouring into it with an intense, moveless heat like that of an
oven. Beyond rose the grey, grim wall seemingly of endless height, and
losing itself right and left in the angles of bastion and
counterscarp. Trees and bushes crowned the wall, and above again
towered the lofty houses on whose massive beauty Time has only set the
hand of approval. The sun was hot and we were lazy; time was our own,
and we lingered, leaning on the wall. Just below us was a pretty
sight--a great black cat lying stretched in the sun, whilst round her
gambolled prettily a tiny black kitten. The mother would wave her tail
for the kitten to play with, or would raise her feet and push away the
little one as an encouragement to further play. They were just at the
foot of the wall, and Elias P. Hutcheson, in order to help the play,
stooped and took from the walk a moderate sized pebble.

'See!' he said, 'I will drop it near the kitten, and they will both
wonder where it came from.'

'Oh, be careful,' said my wife; 'you might hit the dear little thing!'

'Not me, ma'am,' said Elias P. 'Why, I'm as tender as a Maine
cherry-tree. Lor, bless ye. I wouldn't hurt the poor pooty little
critter more'n I'd scalp a baby. An' you may bet your variegated socks
on that! See, I'll drop it fur away on the outside so's not to go near
her!' Thus saying, he leaned over and held his arm out at full length
and dropped the stone. It may be that there is some attractive force
which draws lesser matters to greater; or more probably that the wall
was not plump but sloped to its base--we not noticing the inclination
from above; but the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up to
us through the hot air, right on the kitten's head, and shattered out
its little brains then and there. The black cat cast a swift upward
glance, and we saw her eyes like green fire fixed an instant on Elias
P. Hutcheson; and then her attention was given to the kitten, which
lay still with just a quiver of her tiny limbs, whilst a thin red
stream trickled from a gaping wound. With a muffled cry, such as a
human being might give, she bent over the kitten licking its wounds
and moaning. Suddenly she seemed to realise that it was dead, and
again threw her eyes up at us. I shall never forget the sight, for she
looked the perfect incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with
lurid fire, and the white, sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through
the blood which dabbled her mouth and whiskers. She gnashed her teeth,
and her claws stood out stark and at full length on every paw. Then
she made a wild rush up the wall as if to reach us, but when the
momentum ended fell back, and further added to her horrible appearance
for she fell on the kitten, and rose with her black fur smeared with
its brains and blood. Amelia turned quite faint, and I had to lift her
back from the wall. There was a seat close by in shade of a spreading
plane-tree, and here I placed her whilst she composed herself. Then I
went back to Hutcheson, who stood without moving, looking down on the
angry cat below.

As I joined him, he said:

'Wall, I guess that air the savagest beast I ever see--'cept once when
an Apache squaw had an edge on a half-breed what they nicknamed
"Splinters" 'cos of the way he fixed up her papoose which he stole on
a raid just to show that he appreciated the way they had given his
mother the fire torture. She got that kinder look so set on her face
that it jest seemed to grow there. She followed Splinters mor'n three
year till at last the braves got him and handed him over to her. They
did say that no man, white or Injun, had ever been so long a-dying
under the tortures of the Apaches. The only time I ever see her smile
was when I wiped her out. I kem on the camp just in time to see
Splinters pass in his checks, and he wasn't sorry to go either. He was
a hard citizen, and though I never could shake with him after that
papoose business--for it was bitter bad, and he should have been a
white man, for he looked like one--I see he had got paid out in full.
Durn me, but I took a piece of his hide from one of his skinnin' posts
an' had it made into a pocket-book. It's here now!' and he slapped the
breast pocket of his coat.

Whilst he was speaking the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to
get up the wall. She would take a run back and then charge up,
sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did not seem to mind the
heavy fall which she get each time but started with renewed vigour;
and at every tumble her appearance became more horrible. Hutcheson was
a kind-hearted man--my wife and I had both noticed little acts of
kindness to animals as well as to persons--and he seemed concerned at
the state of fury to which the cat had wrought herself.

'Wall, now!' he said, 'I du declare that that poor critter seems quite
desperate. There! there! poor thing, it was all an accident--though
that won't bring back your little one to you. Say! I wouldn't have had
such a thing happen for a thousand! Just shows what a clumsy fool of a
man can do when he tries to play! Seems I'm too darned slipperhanded
to even play with a cat. Say Colonel!' it was a pleasant way he had to
bestow titles freely--'I hope your wife don't hold no grudge against
me on account of this unpleasantness? Why, I wouldn't have had it
occur on no account.'

He came over to Amelia and apologised profusely, and she with her
usual kindness of heart hastened to assure him that she quite
understood that it was an accident. Then we all went again to the wall
and looked over.

The cat missing Hutcheson's face had drawn back across the moat, and
was sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the
very instant she saw him she did spring, and with a blind unreasoning
fury, which would have been grotesque, only that it was so frightfully
real. She did not try to run up the wall, but simply launched herself
at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings to pass straight
through the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite
concerned, and said to Elias P. in a warning voice:

'Oh! you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if
she were here; her eyes look like positive murder.'

He laughed out jovially. 'Excuse me, ma'am,' he said, 'but I can't
help laughin'. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies an' Injuns bein'
careful of bein' murdered by a cat!'

When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanour seemed to change.
She no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went quietly over,
and sitting again beside the dead kitten began to lick and fondle it
as though it were alive.

'See!' said I, 'the effect of a really strong man. Even that animal
in the midst of her fury recognises the voice of a master, and bows to
him!'

'Like a squaw!' was the only comment of Elias P. Hutcheson, as we
moved on our way round the city fosse. Every now and then we looked
over the wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first she had
kept going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance grew
greater took it in her mouth and so followed. After a while, however,
she abandoned this, for we saw her following all alone; she had
evidently hidden the body somewhere. Amelia's alarm grew at the cat's
persistence, and more than once she repeated her warning; but the
American always laughed with amusement, till finally, seeing that she
was beginning to be worried, he said:

'I say, ma'am, you needn't be skeered over that cat. I go heeled, I
du!' Here he slapped his pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar
region. 'Why sooner'n have you worried, I'll shoot the critter, right
here, an' risk the police interferin' with a citizen of the United
States for carryin' arms contrairy to reg'lations!' As he spoke he
looked over the wall, but the cat on seeing him, retreated, with a
growl, into a bed of tall flowers, and was hidden. He went on: 'Blest
if that ar critter ain't got more sense of what's good for her than
most Christians. I guess we've seen the last of her! You bet, she'll
go back now to that busted kitten and have a private funeral of it,
all to herself!'

Amelia did not like to say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness
to her, fulfil his threat of shooting the cat: and so we went on and
crossed the little wooden bridge leading to the gateway whence ran the
steep paved roadway between the Burg and the pentagonal Torture Tower.
As we crossed the bridge we saw the cat again down below us. When she
saw us her fury seemed to return, and she made frantic efforts to get
up the steep wall. Hutcheson laughed as he looked down at her, and
said:

'Goodbye, old girl. Sorry I injured your feelin's, but you'll get over
it in time! So long!' And then we passed through the long, dim archway
and came to the gate of the Burg.

When we came out again after our survey of this most beautiful old
place which not even the well-intentioned efforts of the Gothic
restorers of forty years ago have been able to spoil--though their
restoration was then glaring white--we seemed to have quite forgotten
the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree with its
great trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the
deep well cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of old,
and the lovely view from the city wall whence we heard, spread over
almost a full quarter of an hour, the multitudinous chimes of the
city, had all helped to wipe out from our minds the incident of the
slain kitten.

We were the only visitors who had entered the Torture Tower that
morning--so at least said the old custodian--and as we had the place
all to ourselves were able to make a minute and more satisfactory
survey than would have otherwise been possible. The custodian, looking
to us as the sole source of his gains for the day, was willing to meet
our wishes in any way. The Torture Tower is truly a grim place, even
now when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream of life, and
the joy that follows life, into the place; but at the time I mention
it wore its grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of ages seemed
to have settled on it, and the darkness and the horror of its memories
seem to have become sentient in a way that would have satisfied the
Pantheistic souls of Philo or Spinoza. The lower chamber where we
entered was seemingly, in its normal state, filled with incarnate
darkness; even the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed
to be lost in the vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the
masonry rough as when the builder's scaffolding had come down, but
coated with dust and marked here and there with patches of dark stain
which, if walls could speak, could have given their own dread memories
of fear and pain. We were glad to pass up the dusty wooden staircase,
the custodian leaving the outer door open to light us somewhat on our
way; for to our eyes the one long-wick'd, evil-smelling candle stuck
in a sconce on the wall gave an inadequate light. When we came up
through the open trap in the corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia
held on to me so tightly that I could actually feel her heart beat. I
must say for my own part that I was not surprised at her fear, for
this room was even more gruesome than that below. Here there was
certainly more light, but only just sufficient to realise the horrible
surroundings of the place. The builders of the tower had evidently
intended that only they who should gain the top should have any of the
joys of light and prospect. There, as we had noticed from below, were
ranges of windows, albeit of mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the
tower were only a very few narrow slits such as were habitual in
places of mediaeval defence. A few of these only lit the chamber, and
these so high up in the wall that from no part could the sky be seen
through the thickness of the walls. In racks, and leaning in disorder
against the walls, were a number of headsmen's swords, great
double-handed weapons with broad blade and keen edge. Hard by were
several blocks whereon the necks of the victims had lain, with here
and there deep notches where the steel had bitten through the guard of
flesh and shored into the wood. Round the chamber, placed in all sorts
of irregular ways, were many implements of torture which made one's
heart ache to see--chairs full of spikes which gave instant and
excruciating pain; chairs and couches with dull knobs whose torture
was seemingly less, but which, though slower, were equally
efficacious; racks, belts, boots, gloves, collars, all made for
compressing at will; steel baskets in which the head could be slowly
crushed into a pulp if necessary; watchmen's hooks with long handle
and knife that cut at resistance--this a speciality of the old
Nurnberg police system; and many, many other devices for man's injury
to man. Amelia grew quite pale with the horror of the things, but
fortunately did not faint, for being a little overcome she sat down on
a torture chair, but jumped up again with a shriek, all tendency to
faint gone. We both pretended that it was the injury done to her dress
by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had upset her,
and Mr. Hutcheson acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a
kind-hearted laugh.

But the central object in the whole of this chamber of horrors was the
engine known as the Iron Virgin, which stood near the centre of the
room. It was a rudely-shaped figure of a woman, something of the bell
order, or, to make a closer comparison, of the figure of Mrs. Noah in
the children's Ark, but without that slimness of waist and perfect
_rondeur_ of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah family.
One would hardly have recognised it as intended for a human figure at
all had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a
woman's face. This machine was coated with rust without, and covered
with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure,
about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through a
pulley, fastened on the wooden pillar which sustained the flooring
above. The custodian pulling this rope showed that a section of the
front was hinged like a door at one side; we then saw that the engine
was of considerable thickness, leaving just room enough inside for a
man to be placed. The door was of equal thickness and of great weight,
for it took the custodian all his strength, aided though he was by the
contrivance of the pulley, to open it. This weight was partly due to
the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its
weight downwards, so that it might shut of its own accord when the
strain was released. The inside was honeycombed with rust--nay more,
the rust alone that comes through time would hardly have eaten so deep
into the iron walls; the rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed! It
was only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the door that
the diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several
long spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the
points, placed in such a position that when the door should close the
upper ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his
heart and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this
time she fainted dead off, and I had to carry her down the stairs, and
place her on a bench outside till she recovered. That she felt it to
the quick was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears to
this day a rude birthmark on his breast, which has, by family
consent, been accepted as representing the Nurnberg Virgin.

When we got back to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the
Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophising, and now gave us the
benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium.

'Wall, I guess I've been learnin' somethin' here while madam has been
gettin' over her faint. 'Pears to me that we're a long way behind the
times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the plains
that the Injun could give us points in tryin' to make a man
uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party
could raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on
the squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on
him. The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the
edges air eaten out by what uster be on them. It'd be a good thing for
our Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to send
round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin' out of the bucks,
and the squaws too, by showing them as how old civilisation lays over
them at their best. Guess but I'll get in that box a minute jest to
see how it feels!'

'Oh no! no!' said Amelia. 'It is too terrible!'

'Guess, ma'am, nothin's too terrible to the explorin' mind. I've been
in some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse
while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory--an' another
time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war
path an' I didn't keer to leave my kyard on them. I've been two days
in a caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an'
was one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson
what slid over on her side when we was settin' the foundations of the
Buffalo Bridge. I've not funked an odd experience yet, an' I don't
propose to begin now!'

We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: 'Well, hurry up,
old man, and get through it quick!'

'All right, General,' said he, 'but I calculate we ain't quite ready
yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister,
didn't volunteer for the office--not much! And I guess there was some
ornamental tyin' up before the big stroke was made. I want to go into
this thing fair and square, so I must get fixed up proper first. I
dare say this old galoot can rise some string and tie me up accordin'
to sample?'

This was said interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter,
who understood the drift of his speech, though perhaps not
appreciating to the full the niceties of dialect and imagery, shook
his head. His protest was, however, only formal and made to be
overcome. The American thrust a gold piece into his hand, saying:
'Take it, pard! it's your pot; and don't be skeer'd. This ain't no
necktie party that you're asked to assist in!' He produced some thin
frayed rope and proceeded to bind our companion with sufficient
strictness for the purpose. When the upper part of his body was bound,
Hutcheson said:

'Hold on a moment, Judge. Guess I'm too heavy for you to tote into the
canister. You jest let me walk in, and then you can wash up regardin'
my legs!'

Whilst speaking he had backed himself into the opening which was just
enough to hold him. It was a close fit and no mistake. Amelia looked
on with fear in her eyes, but she evidently did not like to say
anything. Then the custodian completed his task by tying the
American's feet together so that he was now absolutely helpless and
fixed in his voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the
incipient smile which was habitual to his face blossomed into
actuality as he said:

'Guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf! There ain't
much room for a full-grown citizen of the United States to hustle. We
uster make our coffins more roomier in Idaho territory. Now, Judge,
you jest begin to let this door down, slow, on to me. I want to feel
the same pleasure as the other jays had when those spikes began to
move toward their eyes!'

'Oh no! no! no!' broke in Amelia hysterically. 'It is too terrible! I
can't bear to see it!--I can't! I can't!' But the American was
obdurate. 'Say, Colonel,' said he, 'why not take Madame for a little
promenade? I wouldn't hurt her feelin's for the world; but now that I
am here, havin' kem eight thousand miles, wouldn't it be too hard to
give up the very experience I've been pinin' an' pantin' fur? A man
can't get to feel like canned goods every time! Me and the Judge
here'll fix up this thing in no time, an' then you'll come back, an'
we'll all laugh together!'

Once more the resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and
Amelia stayed holding tight to my arm and shivering whilst the
custodian began to slacken slowly inch by inch the rope that held back
the iron door. Hutcheson's face was positively radiant as his eyes
followed the first movement of the spikes.

'Wall!' he said, 'I guess I've not had enjoyment like this since I
left Noo York. Bar a scrap with a French sailor at Wapping--an' that
warn't much of a picnic neither--I've not had a show fur real pleasure
in this dod-rotted Continent, where there ain't no b'ars nor no
Injuns, an' wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don't you
rush this business! I want a show for my money this game--I du!'

The custodian must have had in him some of the blood of his
predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he worked the engine with a
deliberate and excruciating slowness which after five minutes, in
which the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches,
began to overcome Amelia. I saw her lips whiten, and felt her hold
upon my arm relax. I looked around an instant for a place whereon to
lay her, and when I looked at her again found that her eye had become
fixed on the side of the Virgin. Following its direction I saw the
black cat crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like danger
lamps in the gloom of the place, and their colour was heightened by
the blood which still smeared her coat and reddened her mouth. I cried
out:

'The cat! look out for the cat!' for even then she sprang out before
the engine. At this moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her
eyes blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out till she seemed twice
her normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger's when the
quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused,
and his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said:

'Darned if the squaw hain't got on all her war paint! Jest give her a
shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I'm so fixed
everlastingly by the boss, that durn my skin if I can keep my eyes
from her if she wants them! Easy there, Judge! don't you slack that ar
rope or I'm euchered!'

At this moment Amelia completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold of
her round the waist or she would have fallen to the floor. Whilst
attending to her I saw the black cat crouching for a spring, and
jumped up to turn the creature out.

But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled
herself, not as we expected at Hutcheson, but straight at the face of
the custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly as one sees in
the Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one
of them light on the poor man's eye, and actually tear through it and
down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed to
spurt from every vein.

With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of
pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so the rope which held
back the iron door. I jumped for it, but was too late, for the cord
ran like lightning through the pulley-block, and the heavy mass fell
forward from its own weight.

As the door closed I caught a glimpse of our poor companion's face. He
seemed frozen with terror. His eyes stared with a horrible anguish as
if dazed, and no sound came from his lips.

And then the spikes did their work. Happily the end was quick, for
when I wrenched open the door they had pierced so deep that they had
locked in the bones of the skull through which they had crushed, and
actually tore him--it--out of his iron prison till, bound as he was,
he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face
turning upward as he fell.

I rushed to my wife, lifted her up and carried her out, for I feared
for her very reason if she should wake from her faint to such a scene.
I laid her on the bench outside and ran back. Leaning against the
wooden column was the custodian moaning in pain whilst he held his
reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head of the
poor American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood
which trickled through the gashed socket of his eyes.

I think no one will call me cruel because I seized one of the old
executioner's swords and shore her in two as she sat.



The Secret of the Growing Gold


When Margaret Delandre went to live at Brent's Rock the whole
neighbourhood awoke to the pleasure of an entirely new scandal.
Scandals in connection with either the Delandre family or the Brents
of Brent's Rock, were not few; and if the secret history of the county
had been written in full both names would have been found well
represented. It is true that the status of each was so different that
they might have belonged to different continents--or to different
worlds for the matter of that--for hitherto their orbits had never
crossed. The Brents were accorded by the whole section of the country
a unique social dominance, and had ever held themselves as high above
the yeoman class to which Margaret Delandre belonged, as a
blue-blooded Spanish hidalgo out-tops his peasant tenantry.

The Delandres had an ancient record and were proud of it in their way
as the Brents were of theirs. But the family had never risen above
yeomanry; and although they had been once well-to-do in the good old
times of foreign wars and protection, their fortunes had withered
under the scorching of the free trade sun and the 'piping times of
peace.' They had, as the elder members used to assert, 'stuck to the
land', with the result that they had taken root in it, body and soul.
In fact, they, having chosen the life of vegetables, had flourished
as vegetation does--blossomed and thrived in the good season and
suffered in the bad. Their holding, Dander's Croft, seemed to have
been worked out, and to be typical of the family which had inhabited
it. The latter had declined generation after generation, sending out
now and again some abortive shoot of unsatisfied energy in the shape
of a soldier or sailor, who had worked his way to the minor grades of
the services and had there stopped, cut short either from unheeding
gallantry in action or from that destroying cause to men without
breeding or youthful care--the recognition of a position above them
which they feel unfitted to fill. So, little by little, the family
dropped lower and lower, the men brooding and dissatisfied, and
drinking themselves into the grave, the women drudging at home, or
marrying beneath them--or worse. In process of time all disappeared,
leaving only two in the Croft, Wykham Delandre and his sister
Margaret. The man and woman seemed to have inherited in masculine and
feminine form respectively the evil tendency of their race, sharing in
common the principles, though manifesting them in different ways, of
sullen passion, voluptuousness and recklessness.

The history of the Brents had been something similar, but showing the
causes of decadence in their aristocratic and not their plebeian
forms. They, too, had sent their shoots to the wars; but their
positions had been different and they had often attained honour--for
without flaw they were gallant, and brave deeds were done by them
before the selfish dissipation which marked them had sapped their
vigour.

The present head of the family--if family it could now be called when
one remained of the direct line--was Geoffrey Brent. He was almost a
type of worn out race, manifesting in some ways its most brilliant
qualities, and in others its utter degradation. He might be fairly
compared with some of those antique Italian nobles whom the painters
have preserved to us with their courage, their unscrupulousness, their
refinement of lust and cruelty--the voluptuary actual with the fiend
potential. He was certainly handsome, with that dark, aquiline,
commanding beauty which women so generally recognise as dominant. With
men he was distant and cold; but such a bearing never deters
womankind. The inscrutable laws of sex have so arranged that even a
timid woman is not afraid of a fierce and haughty man. And so it was
that there was hardly a woman of any kind or degree, who lived within
view of Brent's Rock, who did not cherish some form of secret
admiration for the handsome wastrel. The category was a wide one, for
Brent's Rock rose up steeply from the midst of a level region and for
a circuit of a hundred miles it lay on the horizon, with its high old
towers and steep roofs cutting the level edge of wood and hamlet, and
far-scattered mansions.

So long as Geoffrey Brent confined his dissipations to London and
Paris and Vienna--anywhere out of sight and sound of his home--opinion
was silent. It is easy to listen to far off echoes unmoved, and we can
treat them with disbelief, or scorn, or disdain, or whatever attitude
of coldness may suit our purpose. But when the scandal came close home
it was another matter; and the feelings of independence and integrity
which is in people of every community which is not utterly spoiled,
asserted itself and demanded that condemnation should be expressed.
Still there was a certain reticence in all, and no more notice was
taken of the existing facts than was absolutely necessary. Margaret
Delandre bore herself so fearlessly and so openly--she accepted her
position as the justified companion of Geoffrey Brent so naturally
that people came to believe that she was secretly married to him, and
therefore thought it wiser to hold their tongues lest time should
justify her and also make her an active enemy.

The one person who, by his interference, could have settled all doubts
was debarred by circumstances from interfering in the matter. Wykham
Delandre had quarrelled with his sister--or perhaps it was that she
had quarrelled with him--and they were on terms not merely of armed
neutrality but of bitter hatred. The quarrel had been antecedent to
Margaret going to Brent's Rock. She and Wykham had almost come to
blows. There had certainly been threats on one side and on the other;
and in the end Wykham, overcome with passion, had ordered his sister
to leave his house. She had risen straightway, and, without waiting to
pack up even her own personal belongings, had walked out of the house.
On the threshold she had paused for a moment to hurl a bitter threat
at Wykham that he would rue in shame and despair to the last hour of
his life his act of that day. Some weeks had since passed; and it was
understood in the neighbourhood that Margaret had gone to London, when
she suddenly appeared driving out with Geoffrey Brent, and the entire
neighbourhood knew before nightfall that she had taken up her abode at
the Rock. It was no subject of surprise that Brent had come back
unexpectedly, for such was his usual custom. Even his own servants
never knew when to expect him, for there was a private door, of which
he alone had the key, by which he sometimes entered without anyone in
the house being aware of his coming. This was his usual method of
appearing after a long absence.

Wykham Delandre was furious at the news. He vowed vengeance--and to
keep his mind level with his passion drank deeper than ever. He tried
several times to see his sister, but she contemptuously refused to
meet him. He tried to have an interview with Brent and was refused by
him also. Then he tried to stop him in the road, but without avail,
for Geoffrey was not a man to be stopped against his will. Several
actual encounters took place between the two men, and many more were
threatened and avoided. At last Wykham Delandre settled down to a
morose, vengeful acceptance of the situation.

Neither Margaret nor Geoffrey was of a pacific temperament, and it was
not long before there began to be quarrels between them. One thing
would lead to another, and wine flowed freely at Brent's Rock. Now and
again the quarrels would assume a bitter aspect, and threats would be
exchanged in uncompromising language that fairly awed the listening
servants. But such quarrels generally ended where domestic
altercations do, in reconciliation, and in a mutual respect for the
fighting qualities proportionate to their manifestation. Fighting for
its own sake is found by a certain class of persons, all the world
over, to be a matter of absorbing interest, and there is no reason to
believe that domestic conditions minimise its potency. Geoffrey and
Margaret made occasional absences from Brent's Rock, and on each of
these occasions Wykham Delandre also absented himself; but as he
generally heard of the absence too late to be of any service, he
returned home each time in a more bitter and discontented frame of
mind than before.

At last there came a time when the absence from Brent's Rock became
longer than before. Only a few days earlier there had been a quarrel,
exceeding in bitterness anything which had gone before; but this, too,
had been made up, and a trip on the Continent had been mentioned
before the servants. After a few days Wykham Delandre also went away,
and it was some weeks before he returned. It was noticed that he was
full of some new importance--satisfaction, exaltation--they hardly
knew how to call it. He went straightway to Brent's Rock, and demanded
to see Geoffrey Brent, and on being told that he had not yet returned,
said, with a grim decision which the servants noted:

'I shall come again. My news is solid--it can wait!' and turned away.
Week after week went by, and month after month; and then there came a
rumour, certified later on, that an accident had occurred in the
Zermatt valley. Whilst crossing a dangerous pass the carriage
containing an English lady and the driver had fallen over a precipice,
the gentleman of the party, Mr. Geoffrey Brent, having been
fortunately saved as he had been walking up the hill to ease the
horses. He gave information, and search was made. The broken rail, the
excoriated roadway, the marks where the horses had struggled on the
decline before finally pitching over into the torrent--all told the
sad tale. It was a wet season, and there had been much snow in the
winter, so that the river was swollen beyond its usual volume, and the
eddies of the stream were packed with ice. All search was made, and
finally the wreck of the carriage and the body of one horse were found
in an eddy of the river. Later on the body of the driver was found on
the sandy, torrent-swept waste near Täsch; but the body of the lady,
like that of the other horse, had quite disappeared, and was--what
was left of it by that time--whirling amongst the eddies of the Rhone
on its way down to the Lake of Geneva.

Wykham Delandre made all the enquiries possible, but could not find
any trace of the missing woman. He found, however, in the books of the
various hotels the name of 'Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Brent'. And he had a
stone erected at Zermatt to his sister's memory, under her married
name, and a tablet put up in the church at Bretten, the parish in
which both Brent's Rock and Dander's Croft were situated.

There was a lapse of nearly a year, after the excitement of the matter
had worn away, and the whole neighbourhood had gone on its accustomed
way. Brent was still absent, and Delandre more drunken, more morose,
and more revengeful than before.

Then there was a new excitement. Brent's Rock was being made ready for
a new mistress. It was officially announced by Geoffrey himself in a
letter to the Vicar, that he had been married some months before to an
Italian lady, and that they were then on their way home. Then a small
army of workmen invaded the house; and hammer and plane sounded, and a
general air of size and paint pervaded the atmosphere. One wing of the
old house, the south, was entirely re-done; and then the great body of
the workmen departed, leaving only materials for the doing of the old
hall when Geoffrey Brent should have returned, for he had directed
that the decoration was only to be done under his own eyes. He had
brought with him accurate drawings of a hall in the house of his
bride's father, for he wished to reproduce for her the place to which
she had been accustomed. As the moulding had all to be re-done, some
scaffolding poles and boards were brought in and laid on one side of
the great hall, and also a great wooden tank or box for mixing the
lime, which was laid in bags beside it.

When the new mistress of Brent's Rock arrived the bells of the church
rang out, and there was a general jubilation. She was a beautiful
creature, full of the poetry and fire and passion of the South; and
the few English words which she had learned were spoken in such a
sweet and pretty broken way that she won the hearts of the people
almost as much by the music of her voice as by the melting beauty of
her dark eyes.

Geoffrey Brent seemed more happy than he had ever before appeared; but
there was a dark, anxious look on his face that was new to those who
knew him of old, and he started at times as though at some noise that
was unheard by others.

And so months passed and the whisper grew that at last Brent's Rock
was to have an heir. Geoffrey was very tender to his wife, and the new
bond between them seemed to soften him. He took more interest in his
tenants and their needs than he had ever done; and works of charity on
his part as well as on his sweet young wife's were not lacking. He
seemed to have set all his hopes on the child that was coming, and as
he looked deeper into the future the dark shadow that had come over
his face seemed to die gradually away.

All the time Wykham Delandre nursed his revenge. Deep in his heart had
grown up a purpose of vengeance which only waited an opportunity to
crystallise and take a definite shape. His vague idea was somehow
centred in the wife of Brent, for he knew that he could strike him
best through those he loved, and the coming time seemed to hold in its
womb the opportunity for which he longed. One night he sat alone in
the living-room of his house. It had once been a handsome room in its
way, but time and neglect had done their work and it was now little
better than a ruin, without dignity or picturesqueness of any kind. He
had been drinking heavily for some time and was more than half
stupefied. He thought he heard a noise as of someone at the door and
looked up. Then he called half savagely to come in; but there was no
response. With a muttered blasphemy he renewed his potations.
Presently he forgot all around him, sank into a daze, but suddenly
awoke to see standing before him someone or something like a battered,
ghostly edition of his sister. For a few moments there came upon him a
sort of fear. The woman before him, with distorted features and
burning eyes seemed hardly human, and the only thing that seemed a
reality of his sister, as she had been, was her wealth of golden hair,
and this was now streaked with grey. She eyed her brother with a long,
cold stare; and he, too, as he looked and began to realise the
actuality of her presence, found the hatred of her which he had had,
once again surging up in his heart. All the brooding passion of the
past year seemed to find a voice at once as he asked her:

'Why are you here? You're dead and buried.'

'I am here, Wykham Delandre, for no love of you, but because I hate
another even more than I do you!' A great passion blazed in her eyes.

'Him?' he asked, in so fierce a whisper that even the woman was for an
instant startled till she regained her calm.

'Yes, him!' she answered. 'But make no mistake, my revenge is my own;
and I merely use you to help me to it.' Wykham asked suddenly:

'Did he marry you?'

The woman's distorted face broadened out in a ghastly attempt at a
smile. It was a hideous mockery, for the broken features and seamed
scars took strange shapes and strange colours, and queer lines of
white showed out as the straining muscles pressed on the old
cicatrices.

'So you would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that
your sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my
revenge on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair's breadth. I
have come here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that
if any violence be done me where I am going there may be a witness.'

'Where are you going?' demanded her brother.

'That is my affair! and I have not the least intention of letting you
know!' Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and
fell. As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following
his sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he
would follow her through the darkness by the light of her hair, and of
her beauty. At this she turned on him, and said that there were others
beside him that would rue her hair and her beauty too. 'As he will,'
she hissed; 'for the hair remains though the beauty be gone. When he
withdrew the lynch-pin and sent us over the precipice into the
torrent, he had little thought of my beauty. Perhaps his beauty would
be scarred like mine were he whirled, as I was, among the rocks of the
Visp, and frozen on the ice pack in the drift of the river. But let
him beware! His time is coming!' and with a fierce gesture she flung
open the door and passed out into the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later on that night, Mrs. Brent, who was but half-asleep, became
suddenly awake and spoke to her husband:

'Geoffrey, was not that the click of a lock somewhere below our
window?'

But Geoffrey--though she thought that he, too, had started at the
noise--seemed sound asleep, and breathed heavily. Again Mrs. Brent
dozed; but this time awoke to the fact that her husband had arisen and
was partially dressed. He was deadly pale, and when the light of the
lamp which he had in his hand fell on his face, she was frightened at
the look in his eyes.

'What is it, Geoffrey? What dost thou?' she asked.

'Hush! little one,' he answered, in a strange, hoarse voice. 'Go to
sleep. I am restless, and wish to finish some work I left undone.'

'Bring it here, my husband,' she said; 'I am lonely and I fear when
thou art away.'

For reply he merely kissed her and went out, closing the door behind
him. She lay awake for awhile, and then nature asserted itself, and
she slept.

Suddenly she started broad awake with the memory in her ears of a
smothered cry from somewhere not far off. She jumped up and ran to the
door and listened, but there was no sound. She grew alarmed for her
husband, and called out: 'Geoffrey! Geoffrey!'

After a few moments the door of the great hall opened, and Geoffrey
appeared at it, but without his lamp.

'Hush!' he said, in a sort of whisper, and his voice was harsh and
stern. 'Hush! Get to bed! I am working, and must not be disturbed. Go
to sleep, and do not wake the house!'

With a chill in her heart--for the harshness of her husband's voice
was new to her--she crept back to bed and lay there trembling, too
frightened to cry, and listened to every sound. There was a long pause
of silence, and then the sound of some iron implement striking muffled
blows! Then there came a clang of a heavy stone falling, followed by a
muffled curse. Then a dragging sound, and then more noise of stone on
stone. She lay all the while in an agony of fear, and her heart beat
dreadfully. She heard a curious sort of scraping sound; and then there
was silence. Presently the door opened gently, and Geoffrey appeared.
His wife pretended to be asleep; but through her eyelashes she saw him
wash from his hands something white that looked like lime.

In the morning he made no allusion to the previous night, and she was
afraid to ask any question.

From that day there seemed some shadow over Geoffrey Brent. He neither
ate nor slept as he had been accustomed, and his former habit of
turning suddenly as though someone were speaking from behind him
revived. The old hall seemed to have some kind of fascination for him.
He used to go there many times in the day, but grew impatient if
anyone, even his wife, entered it. When the builder's foreman came to
inquire about continuing his work Geoffrey was out driving; the man
went into the hall, and when Geoffrey returned the servant told him of
his arrival and where he was. With a frightful oath he pushed the
servant aside and hurried up to the old hall. The workman met him
almost at the door; and as Geoffrey burst into the room he ran against
him. The man apologised:

'Beg pardon, sir, but I was just going out to make some enquiries. I
directed twelve sacks of lime to be sent here, but I see there are
only ten.'

'Damn the ten sacks and the twelve too!' was the ungracious and
incomprehensible rejoinder.

The workman looked surprised, and tried to turn the conversation.

'I see, sir, there is a little matter which our people must have done;
but the governor will of course see it set right at his own cost.'

'What do you mean?'

'That 'ere 'arth-stone, sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole
on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it's thick enough
you'd think to stand hanythink.' Geoffrey was silent for quite a
minute, and then said in a constrained voice and with much gentler
manner:

'Tell your people that I am not going on with the work in the hall at
present. I want to leave it as it is for a while longer.'

'All right sir. I'll send up a few of our chaps to take away these
poles and lime bags and tidy the place up a bit.'

'No! No!' said Geoffrey, 'leave them where they are. I shall send and
tell you when you are to get on with the work.' So the foreman went
away, and his comment to his master was:

'I'd send in the bill, sir, for the work already done. 'Pears to me
that money's a little shaky in that quarter.'

Once or twice Delandre tried to stop Brent on the road, and, at last,
finding that he could not attain his object rode after the carriage,
calling out:

'What has become of my sister, your wife?' Geoffrey lashed his horses
into a gallop, and the other, seeing from his white face and from his
wife's collapse almost into a faint that his object was attained, rode
away with a scowl and a laugh.

That night when Geoffrey went into the hall he passed over to the
great fireplace, and all at once started back with a smothered cry.
Then with an effort he pulled himself together and went away,
returning with a light. He bent down over the broken hearth-stone to
see if the moonlight falling through the storied window had in any way
deceived him. Then with a groan of anguish he sank to his knees.

There, sure enough, through the crack in the broken stone were
protruding a multitude of threads of golden hair just tinged with
grey!

He was disturbed by a noise at the door, and looking round, saw his
wife standing in the doorway. In the desperation of the moment he took
action to prevent discovery, and lighting a match at the lamp, stooped
down and burned away the hair that rose through the broken stone. Then
rising nonchalantly as he could, he pretended surprise at seeing his
wife beside him.

For the next week he lived in an agony; for, whether by accident or
design, he could not find himself alone in the hall for any length of
time. At each visit the hair had grown afresh through the crack, and
he had to watch it carefully lest his terrible secret should be
discovered. He tried to find a receptacle for the body of the murdered
woman outside the house, but someone always interrupted him; and once,
when he was coming out of the private doorway, he was met by his wife,
who began to question him about it, and manifested surprise that she
should not have before noticed the key which he now reluctantly showed
her. Geoffrey dearly and passionately loved his wife, so that any
possibility of her discovering his dread secrets, or even of doubting
him, filled him with anguish; and after a couple of days had passed,
he could not help coming to the conclusion that, at least, she
suspected something.

That very evening she came into the hall after her drive and found him
there sitting moodily by the deserted fireplace. She spoke to him
directly.

'Geoffrey, I have been spoken to by that fellow Delandre, and he says
horrible things. He tells to me that a week ago his sister returned to
his house, the wreck and ruin of her former self, with only her golden
hair as of old, and announced some fell intention. He asked me where
she is--and oh, Geoffrey, she is dead, she is dead! So how can she
have returned? Oh! I am in dread, and I know not where to turn!'

For answer, Geoffrey burst into a torrent of blasphemy which made her
shudder. He cursed Delandre and his sister and all their kind, and in
especial he hurled curse after curse on her golden hair.

'Oh, hush! hush!' she said, and was then silent, for she feared her
husband when she saw the evil effect of his humour. Geoffrey in the
torrent of his anger stood up and moved away from the hearth; but
suddenly stopped as he saw a new look of terror in his wife's eyes. He
followed their glance, and then he too, shuddered--for there on the
broken hearth-stone lay a golden streak as the point of the hair rose
though the crack.

'Look, look!' she shrieked. 'Is it some ghost of the dead! Come
away--come away!' and seizing her husband by the wrist with the frenzy
of madness, she pulled him from the room.

That night she was in a raging fever. The doctor of the district
attended her at once, and special aid was telegraphed for to London.
Geoffrey was in despair, and in his anguish at the danger of his young
wife almost forgot his own crime and its consequences. In the evening
the doctor had to leave to attend to others; but he left Geoffrey in
charge of his wife. His last words were:

'Remember, you must humour her till I come in the morning, or till
some other doctor has her case in hand. What you have to dread is
another attack of emotion. See that she is kept warm. Nothing more can
be done.'

Late in the evening, when the rest of the household had retired,
Geoffrey's wife got up from her bed and called to her husband.

'Come!' she said. 'Come to the old hall! I know where the gold comes
from! I want to see it grow!'

Geoffrey would fain have stopped her, but he feared for her life or
reason on the one hand, and lest in a paroxysm she should shriek out
her terrible suspicion, and seeing that it was useless to try to
prevent her, wrapped a warm rug around her and went with her to the
old hall. When they entered, she turned and shut the door and locked
it.

'We want no strangers amongst us three tonight!' she whispered with a
wan smile.

'We three! nay we are but two,' said Geoffrey with a shudder; he
feared to say more.

'Sit here,' said his wife as she put out the light. 'Sit here by the
hearth and watch the gold growing. The silver moonlight is jealous!
See, it steals along the floor towards the gold--our gold!' Geoffrey
looked with growing horror, and saw that during the hours that had
passed the golden hair had protruded further through the broken
hearth-stone. He tried to hide it by placing his feet over the broken
place; and his wife, drawing her chair beside him, leant over and
laid her head on his shoulder.

'Now do not stir, dear,' she said; 'let us sit still and watch. We
shall find the secret of the growing gold!' He passed his arm round
her and sat silent; and as the moonlight stole along the floor she
sank to sleep.

He feared to wake her; and so sat silent and miserable as the hours
stole away.

Before his horror-struck eyes the golden-hair from the broken stone
grew and grew; and as it increased, so his heart got colder and
colder, till at last he had not power to stir, and sat with eyes full
of terror watching his doom.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the morning when the London doctor came, neither Geoffrey nor his
wife could be found. Search was made in all the rooms, but without
avail. As a last resource the great door of the old hall was broken
open, and those who entered saw a grim and sorry sight.

There by the deserted hearth Geoffrey Brent and his young wife sat
cold and white and dead. Her face was peaceful, and her eyes were
closed in sleep; but his face was a sight that made all who saw it
shudder, for there was on it a look of unutterable horror. The eyes
were open and stared glassily at his feet, which were twined with
tresses of golden hair, streaked with grey, which came through the
broken hearth-stone.



The Gipsy Prophecy


'I really think,' said the Doctor, 'that, at any rate, one of us
should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.'

'Good!' said Considine. 'After dinner we will take our cigars and
stroll over to the camp.'

Accordingly, when the dinner was over, and the _La Tour_ finished,
Joshua Considine and his friend, Dr Burleigh, went over to the east
side of the moor, where the gipsy encampment lay. As they were
leaving, Mary Considine, who had walked as far as the end of the
garden where it opened into the laneway, called after her husband:

'Mind, Joshua, you are to give them a fair chance, but don't give them
any clue to a fortune--and don't you get flirting with any of the
gipsy maidens--and take care to keep Gerald out of harm.'

For answer Considine held up his hand, as if taking a stage oath, and
whistled the air of the old song, 'The Gipsy Countess.' Gerald joined
in the strain, and then, breaking into merry laughter, the two men
passed along the laneway to the common, turning now and then to wave
their hands to Mary, who leaned over the gate, in the twilight,
looking after them.

It was a lovely evening in the summer; the very air was full of rest
and quiet happiness, as though an outward type of the peacefulness and
joy which made a heaven of the home of the young married folk.
Considine's life had not been an eventful one. The only disturbing
element which he had ever known was in his wooing of Mary Winston, and
the long-continued objection of her ambitious parents, who expected a
brilliant match for their only daughter. When Mr. and Mrs. Winston had
discovered the attachment of the young barrister, they had tried to
keep the young people apart by sending their daughter away for a long
round of visits, having made her promise not to correspond with her
lover during her absence. Love, however, had stood the test. Neither
absence nor neglect seemed to cool the passion of the young man, and
jealousy seemed a thing unknown to his sanguine nature; so, after a
long period of waiting, the parents had given in, and the young folk
were married.

They had been living in the cottage a few months, and were just
beginning to feel at home. Gerald Burleigh, Joshua's old college chum,
and himself a sometime victim of Mary's beauty, had arrived a week
before, to stay with them for as long a time as he could tear himself
away from his work in London.

When her husband had quite disappeared Mary went into the house, and,
sitting down at the piano, gave an hour to Mendelssohn.

It was but a short walk across the common, and before the cigars
required renewing the two men had reached the gipsy camp. The place
was as picturesque as gipsy camps--when in villages and when business
is good--usually are. There were some few persons round the fire,
investing their money in prophecy, and a large number of others,
poorer or more parsimonious, who stayed just outside the bounds but
near enough to see all that went on.

As the two gentlemen approached, the villagers, who knew Joshua, made
way a little, and a pretty, keen-eyed gipsy girl tripped up and asked
to tell their fortunes. Joshua held out his hand, but the girl,
without seeming to see it, stared at his face in a very odd manner.
Gerald nudged him:

'You must cross her hand with silver,' he said. 'It is one of the most
important parts of the mystery.' Joshua took from his pocket a
half-crown and held it out to her, but, without looking at it, she
answered:

'You have to cross the gipsy's hand with gold.'

Gerald laughed. 'You are at a premium as a subject,' he said. Joshua
was of the kind of man--the universal kind--who can tolerate being
stared at by a pretty girl; so, with some little deliberation, he
answered:

'All right; here you are, my pretty girl; but you must give me a real
good fortune for it,' and he handed her a half sovereign, which she
took, saying:

'It is not for me to give good fortune or bad, but only to read what
the Stars have said.' She took his right hand and turned it palm
upward; but the instant her eyes met it she dropped it as though it
had been red hot, and, with a startled look, glided swiftly away.
Lifting the curtain of the large tent, which occupied the centre of
the camp, she disappeared within.

'Sold again!' said the cynical Gerald. Joshua stood a little amazed,
and not altogether satisfied. They both watched the large tent. In a
few moments there emerged from the opening not the young girl, but a
stately looking woman of middle age and commanding presence.

The instant she appeared the whole camp seemed to stand still. The
clamour of tongues, the laughter and noise of the work were, for a
second or two, arrested, and every man or woman who sat, or crouched,
or lay, stood up and faced the imperial looking gipsy.

'The Queen, of course,' murmured Gerald. 'We are in luck tonight.' The
gipsy Queen threw a searching glance around the camp, and then,
without hesitating an instant, came straight over and stood before
Joshua.

'Hold out your hand,' she said in a commanding tone.

Again Gerald spoke, _sotto voce_: 'I have not been spoken to in that
way since I was at school.'

'Your hand must be crossed with gold.'

'A hundred per cent. at this game,' whispered Gerald, as Joshua laid
another half sovereign on his upturned palm.

The gipsy looked at the hand with knitted brows; then suddenly looking
up into his face, said:

'Have you a strong will--have you a true heart that can be brave for
one you love?'

'I hope so; but I am afraid I have not vanity enough to say "yes".'

'Then I will answer for you; for I read resolution in your
face--resolution desperate and determined if need be. You have a wife
you love?'

'Yes,' emphatically.

'Then leave her at once--never see her face again. Go from her now,
while love is fresh and your heart is free from wicked intent. Go
quick--go far, and never see her face again!'

Joshua drew away his hand quickly, and said, 'Thank you!' stiffly but
sarcastically, as he began to move away.

'I say!' said Gerald, 'you're not going like that, old man; no use in
being indignant with the Stars or their prophet--and, moreover, your
sovereign--what of it? At least, hear the matter out.'

'Silence, ribald!' commanded the Queen, 'you know not what you do. Let
him go--and go ignorant, if he will not be warned.'

Joshua immediately turned back. 'At all events, we will see this thing
out,' he said. 'Now, madam, you have given me advice, but I paid for a
fortune.'

'Be warned!' said the gipsy. 'The Stars have been silent for long; let
the mystery still wrap them round.'

'My dear madam, I do not get within touch of a mystery every day, and
I prefer for my money knowledge rather than ignorance. I can get the
latter commodity for nothing when I want any of it.'

Gerald echoed the sentiment. 'As for me I have a large and unsaleable
stock on hand.'

The gipsy Queen eyed the two men sternly, and then said: 'As you wish.
You have chosen for yourself, and have met warning with scorn, and
appeal with levity. On your own heads be the doom!'

'Amen!' said Gerald.

With an imperious gesture the Queen took Joshua's hand again, and
began to tell his fortune.

'I see here the flowing of blood; it will flow before long; it is
running in my sight. It flows through the broken circle of a severed
ring.'

'Go on!' said Joshua, smiling. Gerald was silent.

'Must I speak plainer?'

'Certainly; we commonplace mortals want something definite. The Stars
are a long way off, and their words get somewhat dulled in the
message.'

The gipsy shuddered, and then spoke impressively. 'This is the hand of
a murderer--the murderer of his wife!' She dropped the hand and turned
away.

Joshua laughed. 'Do you know,' said he, 'I think if I were you I
should prophesy some jurisprudence into my system. For instance, you
say "this hand is the hand of a murderer." Well, whatever it may be in
the future--or potentially--it is at present not one. You ought to
give your prophecy in such terms as "the hand which will be a
murderer's", or, rather, "the hand of one who will be the murderer of
his wife". The Stars are really not good on technical questions.'

The gipsy made no reply of any kind, but, with drooping head and
despondent mien, walked slowly to her tent, and, lifting the curtain,
disappeared.

Without speaking the two men turned homewards, and walked across the
moor. Presently, after some little hesitation, Gerald spoke.

'Of course, old man, this is all a joke; a ghastly one, but still a
joke. But would it not be well to keep it to ourselves?'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, not tell your wife. It might alarm her.'

'Alarm her! My dear Gerald, what are you thinking of? Why, she would
not be alarmed or afraid of me if all the gipsies that ever didn't
come from Bohemia agreed that I was to murder her, or even to have a
hard thought of her, whilst so long as she was saying "Jack
Robinson."'

Gerald remonstrated. 'Old fellow, women are superstitious--far more
than we men are; and, also they are blessed--or cursed--with a nervous
system to which we are strangers. I see too much of it in my work not
to realise it. Take my advice and do not let her know, or you will
frighten her.'

Joshua's lips unconsciously hardened as he answered: 'My dear fellow,
I would not have a secret from my wife. Why, it would be the
beginning of a new order of things between us. We have no secrets from
each other. If we ever have, then you may begin to look out for
something odd between us.'

'Still,' said Gerald, 'at the risk of unwelcome interference, I say
again be warned in time.'

'The gipsy's very words,' said Joshua. 'You and she seem quite of one
accord. Tell me, old man, is this a put-up thing? You told me of the
gipsy camp--did you arrange it all with Her Majesty?' This was said
with an air of bantering earnestness. Gerald assured him that he only
heard of the camp that morning; but he made fun of every answer of his
friend, and, in the process of this raillery, the time passed, and
they entered the cottage.

Mary was sitting at the piano but not playing. The dim twilight had
waked some very tender feelings in her breast, and her eyes were full
of gentle tears. When the men came in she stole over to her husband's
side and kissed him. Joshua struck a tragic attitude.

'Mary,' he said in a deep voice, 'before you approach me, listen to
the words of Fate. The Stars have spoken and the doom is sealed.'

'What is it, dear? Tell me the fortune, but do not frighten me.'

'Not at all, my dear; but there is a truth which it is well that you
should know. Nay, it is necessary so that all your arrangements can be
made beforehand, and everything be decently done and in order.'

'Go on, dear; I am listening.'

'Mary Considine, your effigy may yet be seen at Madame Tussaud's. The
juris-imprudent Stars have announced their fell tidings that this hand
is red with blood--your blood. Mary! Mary! my God!' He sprang
forward, but too late to catch her as she fell fainting on the floor.

'I told you,' said Gerald. 'You don't know them as well as I do.'

After a little while Mary recovered from her swoon, but only to fall
into strong hysterics, in which she laughed and wept and raved and
cried, 'Keep him from me--from me, Joshua, my husband,' and many other
words of entreaty and of fear.

Joshua Considine was in a state of mind bordering on agony, and when
at last Mary became calm he knelt by her and kissed her feet and hands
and hair and called her all the sweet names and said all the tender
things his lips could frame. All that night he sat by her bedside and
held her hand. Far through the night and up to the early morning she
kept waking from sleep and crying out as if in fear, till she was
comforted by the consciousness that her husband was watching beside
her.

Breakfast was late the next morning, but during it Joshua received a
telegram which required him to drive over to Withering, nearly twenty
miles. He was loth to go; but Mary would not hear of his remaining,
and so before noon he drove off in his dog-cart alone.

When he was gone Mary retired to her room. She did not appear at
lunch, but when afternoon tea was served on the lawn under the great
weeping willow, she came to join her guest. She was looking quite
recovered from her illness of the evening before. After some casual
remarks, she said to Gerald: 'Of course it was very silly about last
night, but I could not help feeling frightened. Indeed I would feel so
still if I let myself think of it. But, after all these people may
only imagine things, and I have got a test that can hardly fail to
show that the prediction is false--if indeed it be false,' she added
sadly.

'What is your plan?' asked Gerald.

'I shall go myself to the gipsy camp, and have my fortune told by the
Queen.'

'Capital. May I go with you?'

'Oh, no! That would spoil it. She might know you and guess at me, and
suit her utterance accordingly. I shall go alone this afternoon.'

When the afternoon was gone Mary Considine took her way to the gipsy
encampment. Gerald went with her as far as the near edge of the
common, and returned alone.

Half-an-hour had hardly elapsed when Mary entered the drawing-room,
where he lay on a sofa reading. She was ghastly pale and was in a
state of extreme excitement. Hardly had she passed over the threshold
when she collapsed and sank moaning on the carpet. Gerald rushed to
aid her, but by a great effort she controlled herself and motioned him
to be silent. He waited, and his ready attention to her wish seemed to
be her best help, for, in a few minutes, she had somewhat recovered,
and was able to tell him what had passed.

'When I got to the camp,' she said, 'there did not seem to be a soul
about, I went into the centre and stood there. Suddenly a tall woman
stood beside me. "Something told me I was wanted!" she said. I held
out my hand and laid a piece of silver on it. She took from her neck a
small golden trinket and laid it there also; and then, seizing the
two, threw them into the stream that ran by. Then she took my hand in
hers and spoke: "Naught but blood in this guilty place," and turned
away. I caught hold of her and asked her to tell me more. After some
hesitation, she said: "Alas! alas! I see you lying at your husband's
feet, and his hands are red with blood".'

Gerald did not feel at all at ease, and tried to laugh it off.
'Surely,' he said, 'this woman has a craze about murder.'

'Do not laugh,' said Mary, 'I cannot bear it,' and then, as if with a
sudden impulse, she left the room.

Not long after Joshua returned, bright and cheery, and as hungry as a
hunter after his long drive. His presence cheered his wife, who seemed
much brighter, but she did not mention the episode of the visit to the
gipsy camp, so Gerald did not mention it either. As if by tacit
consent the subject was not alluded to during the evening. But there
was a strange, settled look on Mary's face, which Gerald could not but
observe.

In the morning Joshua came down to breakfast later than usual. Mary
had been up and about the house from an early hour; but as the time
drew on she seemed to get a little nervous and now and again threw
around an anxious look.

Gerald could not help noticing that none of those at breakfast could
get on satisfactorily with their food. It was not altogether that the
chops were tough, but that the knives were all so blunt. Being a
guest, he, of course, made no sign; but presently saw Joshua draw his
thumb across the edge of his knife in an unconscious sort of way. At
the action Mary turned pale and almost fainted.

After breakfast they all went out on the lawn. Mary was making up a
bouquet, and said to her husband, 'Get me a few of the tea-roses,
dear.'

Joshua pulled down a cluster from the front of the house. The stem
bent, but was too tough to break. He put his hand in his pocket to get
his knife; but in vain. 'Lend me your knife, Gerald,' he said. But
Gerald had not got one, so he went into the breakfast room and took
one from the table. He came out feeling its edge and grumbling. 'What
on earth has happened to all the knives--the edges seem all ground
off?' Mary turned away hurriedly and entered the house.

Joshua tried to sever the stalk with the blunt knife as country cooks
sever the necks of fowl--as schoolboys cut twine. With a little effort
he finished the task. The cluster of roses grew thick, so he
determined to gather a great bunch.

He could not find a single sharp knife in the sideboard where the
cutlery was kept, so he called Mary, and when she came, told her the
state of things. She looked so agitated and so miserable that he could
not help knowing the truth, and, as if astounded and hurt, asked her:

'Do you mean to say that _you_ have done it?'

She broke in, 'Oh, Joshua, I was so afraid.'

He paused, and a set, white look came over his face. 'Mary!' said he,
'is this all the trust you have in me? I would not have believed it.'

'Oh, Joshua! Joshua!' she cried entreatingly, 'forgive me,' and wept
bitterly.

Joshua thought a moment and then said: 'I see how it is. We shall
better end this or we shall all go mad.'

He ran into the drawing-room.

'Where are you going?' almost screamed Mary.

Gerald saw what he meant--that he would not be tied to blunt
instruments by the force of a superstition, and was not surprised when
he saw him come out through the French window, bearing in his hand a
large Ghourka knife, which usually lay on the centre table, and which
his brother had sent him from Northern India. It was one of those
great hunting-knives which worked such havoc, at close quarters with
the enemies of the loyal Ghourkas during the mutiny, of great weight
but so evenly balanced in the hand as to seem light, and with an edge
like a razor. With one of these knives a Ghourka can cut a sheep in
two.

When Mary saw him come out of the room with the weapon in his hand she
screamed in an agony of fright, and the hysterics of last night were
promptly renewed.

Joshua ran toward her, and, seeing her falling, threw down the knife
and tried to catch her.

However, he was just a second too late, and the two men cried out in
horror simultaneously as they saw her fall upon the naked blade.

When Gerald rushed over he found that in falling her left hand had
struck the blade, which lay partly upwards on the grass. Some of the
small veins were cut through, and the blood gushed freely from the
wound. As he was tying it up he pointed out to Joshua that the wedding
ring was severed by the steel.

They carried her fainting to the house. When, after a while, she came
out, with her arm in a sling, she was peaceful in her mind and happy.
She said to her husband:

'The gipsy was wonderfully near the truth; too near for the real thing
ever to occur now, dear.'

Joshua bent over and kissed the wounded hand.



The Coming of Abel Behenna


The little Cornish port of Pencastle was bright in the early April,
when the sun had seemingly come to stay after a long and bitter
winter. Boldly and blackly the rock stood out against a background of
shaded blue, where the sky fading into mist met the far horizon. The
sea was of true Cornish hue--sapphire, save where it became deep
emerald green in the fathomless depths under the cliffs, where the
seal caves opened their grim jaws. On the slopes the grass was parched
and brown. The spikes of furze bushes were ashy grey, but the golden
yellow of their flowers streamed along the hillside, dipping out in
lines as the rock cropped up, and lessening into patches and dots till
finally it died away all together where the sea winds swept round the
jutting cliffs and cut short the vegetation as though with an
ever-working aerial shears. The whole hillside, with its body of brown
and flashes of yellow, was just like a colossal yellow-hammer.

The little harbour opened from the sea between towering cliffs, and
behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through
which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a
fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westwards in a serpentine
course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left
and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and
held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence, it
flowed up the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents had of old
cut out its way amongst the hills. This stream was deep at first, with
here and there, where it widened, patches of broken rock exposed at
low water, full of holes where crabs and lobsters were to be found at
the ebb of the tide. From amongst the rocks rose sturdy posts, used
for warping in the little coasting vessels which frequented the port.
Higher up, the stream still flowed deeply, for the tide ran far
inland, but always calmly for all the force of the wildest storm was
broken below. Some quarter mile inland the stream was deep at high
water, but at low tide there were at each side patches of the same
broken rock as lower down, through the chinks of which the sweet water
of the natural stream trickled and murmured after the tide had ebbed
away. Here, too, rose mooring posts for the fishermen's boats. At
either side of the river was a row of cottages down almost on the
level of high tide. They were pretty cottages, strongly and snugly
built, with trim narrow gardens in front, full of old-fashioned
plants, flowering currants, coloured primroses, wallflower, and
stonecrop. Over the fronts of many of them climbed clematis and
wisteria. The window sides and door posts of all were as white as
snow, and the little pathway to each was paved with light coloured
stones. At some of the doors were tiny porches, whilst at others were
rustic seats cut from tree trunks or from old barrels; in nearly every
case the window ledges were filled with boxes or pots of flowers or
foliage plants.

Two men lived in cottages exactly opposite each other across the
stream. Two men, both young, both good-looking, both prosperous, and
who had been companions and rivals from their boyhood. Abel Behenna
was dark with the gypsy darkness which the Phoenician mining wanderers
left in their track; Eric Sanson--which the local antiquarian said was
a corruption of Sagamanson--was fair, with the ruddy hue which marked
the path of the wild Norseman. These two seemed to have singled out
each other from the very beginning to work and strive together, to
fight for each other and to stand back to back in all endeavours. They
had now put the coping-stone on their Temple of Unity by falling in
love with the same girl. Sarah Trefusis was certainly the prettiest
girl in Pencastle, and there was many a young man who would gladly
have tried his fortune with her, but that there were two to contend
against, and each of these the strongest and most resolute man in the
port--except the other. The average young man thought that this was
very hard, and on account of it bore no good will to either of the
three principals: whilst the average young woman who had, lest worse
should befall, to put up with the grumbling of her sweetheart, and the
sense of being only second best which it implied, did not either, be
sure, regard Sarah with friendly eye. Thus it came, in the course of a
year or so, for rustic courtship is a slow process, that the two men
and woman found themselves thrown much together. They were all
satisfied, so it did not matter, and Sarah, who was vain and something
frivolous, took care to have her revenge on both men and women in a
quiet way. When a young woman in her 'walking out' can only boast one
not-quite-satisfied young man, it is no particular pleasure to her to
see her escort cast sheep's eyes at a better-looking girl supported by
two devoted swains.

At length there came a time which Sarah dreaded, and which she had
tried to keep distant--the time when she had to make her choice
between the two men. She liked them both, and, indeed, either of them
might have satisfied the ideas of even a more exacting girl. But her
mind was so constituted that she thought more of what she might lose,
than of what she might gain; and whenever she thought she had made up
her mind she became instantly assailed with doubts as to the wisdom of
her choice. Always the man whom she had presumably lost became endowed
afresh with a newer and more bountiful crop of advantages than had
ever arisen from the possibility of his acceptance. She promised each
man that on her birthday she would give him his answer, and that day,
the 11th of April, had now arrived. The promises had been given singly
and confidentially, but each was given to a man who was not likely to
forget. Early in the morning she found both men hovering round her
door. Neither had taken the other into his confidence, and each was
simply seeking an early opportunity of getting his answer, and
advancing his suit if necessary. Damon, as a rule, does not take
Pythias with him when making a proposal; and in the heart of each man
his own affairs had a claim far above any requirements of friendship.
So, throughout the day, they kept seeing each other out. The position
was doubtless somewhat embarrassing to Sarah, and though the
satisfaction of her vanity that she should be thus adored was very
pleasing, yet there were moments when she was annoyed with both men
for being so persistent. Her only consolation at such moments was that
she saw, through the elaborate smiles of the other girls when in
passing they noticed her door thus doubly guarded, the jealousy which
filled their hearts. Sarah's mother was a person of commonplace and
sordid ideas, and, seeing all along the state of affairs, her one
intention, persistently expressed to her daughter in the plainest
words, was to so arrange matters that Sarah should get all that was
possible out of both men. With this purpose she had cunningly kept
herself as far as possible in the background in the matter of her
daughter's wooings, and watched in silence. At first Sarah had been
indignant with her for her sordid views; but, as usual, her weak
nature gave way before persistence, and she had now got to the stage
of acceptance. She was not surprised when her mother whispered to her
in the little yard behind the house:--

'Go up the hillside for a while; I want to talk to these two. They're
both red-hot for ye, and now's the time to get things fixed!' Sarah
began a feeble remonstrance, but her mother cut her short.

'I tell ye, girl, that my mind is made up! Both these men want ye, and
only one can have ye, but before ye choose it'll be so arranged that
ye'll have all that both have got! Don't argy, child! Go up the
hillside, and when ye come back I'll have it fixed--I see a way quite
easy!' So Sarah went up the hillside through the narrow paths between
the golden furze, and Mrs. Trefusis joined the two men in the
living-room of the little house.

She opened the attack with the desperate courage which is in all
mothers when they think for their children, howsoever mean the
thoughts may be.

'Ye two men, ye're both in love with my Sarah!'

Their bashful silence gave consent to the barefaced proposition. She
went on.

'Neither of ye has much!' Again they tacitly acquiesced in the soft
impeachment.

'I don't know that either of ye could keep a wife!' Though neither
said a word their looks and bearing expressed distinct dissent. Mrs.
Trefusis went on:

'But if ye'd put what ye both have together ye'd make a comfortable
home for one of ye--and Sarah!' She eyed the men keenly, with her
cunning eyes half shut, as she spoke; then satisfied from her scrutiny
that the idea was accepted she went on quickly, as if to prevent
argument:

'The girl likes ye both, and mayhap it's hard for her to choose. Why
don't ye toss up for her? First put your money together--ye've each
got a bit put by, I know. Let the lucky man take the lot and trade
with it a bit, and then come home and marry her. Neither of ye's
afraid, I suppose! And neither of ye'll say that he won't do that much
for the girl that ye both say ye love!'

Abel broke the silence:

'It don't seem the square thing to toss for the girl! She wouldn't
like it herself, and it doesn't seem--seem respectful like to her--'
Eric interrupted. He was conscious that his chance was not so good as
Abel's in case Sarah should wish to choose between them:

'Are ye afraid of the hazard?'

'Not me!' said Abel, boldly. Mrs. Trefusis, seeing that her idea was
beginning to work, followed up the advantage.

'It is settled that ye put yer money together to make a home for her,
whether ye toss for her or leave it for her to choose?'

'Yes,' said Eric quickly, and Abel agreed with equal sturdiness. Mrs.
Trefusis' little cunning eyes twinkled. She heard Sarah's step in the
yard, and said:

'Well! here she comes, and I leave it to her.' And she went out.

During her brief walk on the hillside Sarah had been trying to make up
her mind. She was feeling almost angry with both men for being the
cause of her difficulty, and as she came into the room said shortly:

'I want to have a word with you both--come to the Flagstaff Rock,
where we can be alone.' She took her hat and went out of the house up
the winding path to the steep rock crowned with a high flagstaff,
where once the wreckers' fire basket used to burn. This was the rock
which formed the northern jaw of the little harbour. There was only
room on the path for two abreast, and it marked the state of things
pretty well when, by a sort of implied arrangement, Sarah went first,
and the two men followed, walking abreast and keeping step. By this
time, each man's heart was boiling with jealousy. When they came to
the top of the rock, Sarah stood against the flagstaff, and the two
young men stood opposite her. She had chosen her position with
knowledge and intention, for there was no room for anyone to stand
beside her. They were all silent for a while; then Sarah began to
laugh and said:--

'I promised the both of you to give you an answer to-day. I've been
thinking and thinking and thinking, till I began to get angry with you
both for plaguing me so; and even now I don't seem any nearer than
ever I was to making up my mind.' Eric said suddenly:

'Let us toss for it, lass!' Sarah showed no indignation whatever at
the proposition; her mother's eternal suggestion had schooled her to
the acceptance of something of the kind, and her weak nature made it
easy to her to grasp at any way out of the difficulty. She stood with
downcast eyes idly picking at the sleeve of her dress, seeming to
have tacitly acquiesced in the proposal. Both men instinctively
realising this pulled each a coin from his pocket, spun it in the air,
and dropped his other hand over the palm on which it lay. For a few
seconds they remained thus, all silent; then Abel, who was the more
thoughtful of the men, spoke:

'Sarah! is this good?' As he spoke he removed the upper hand from the
coin and placed the latter back in his pocket. Sarah was nettled.

'Good or bad, it's good enough for me! Take it or leave it as you
like,' she said, to which he replied quickly:

'Nay lass! Aught that concerns you is good enow for me. I did but
think of you lest you might have pain or disappointment hereafter. If
you love Eric better nor me, in God's name say so, and I think I'm man
enow to stand aside. Likewise, if I'm the one, don't make us both
miserable for life!' Face to face with a difficulty, Sarah's weak
nature proclaimed itself; she put her hands before her face and began
to cry, saying--

'It was my mother. She keeps telling me!' The silence which followed
was broken by Eric, who said hotly to Abel:

'Let the lass alone, can't you? If she wants to choose this way, let
her. It's good enough for me--and for you, too! She's said it now, and
must abide by it!' Hereupon Sarah turned upon him in sudden fury, and
cried:

'Hold your tongue! what is it to you, at any rate?' and she resumed
her crying. Eric was so flabbergasted that he had not a word to say,
but stood looking particularly foolish, with his mouth open and his
hands held out with the coin still between them. All were silent till
Sarah, taking her hands from her face laughed hysterically and said:

'As you two can't make up your minds, I'm going home!' and she turned
to go.

'Stop,' said Abel, in an authoritative voice. 'Eric, you hold the
coin, and I'll cry. Now, before we settle it, let us clearly
understand: the man who wins takes all the money that we both have
got, brings it to Bristol and ships on a voyage and trades with it.
Then he comes back and marries Sarah, and they two keep all, whatever
there may be, as the result of the trading. Is this what we
understand?'

'Yes,' said Eric.

'I'll marry him on my next birthday,' said Sarah. Having said it the
intolerably mercenary spirit of her action seemed to strike her, and
impulsively she turned away with a bright blush. Fire seemed to
sparkle in the eyes of both men. Said Eric: 'A year so be! The man
that wins is to have one year.'

'Toss!' cried Abel, and the coin spun in the air. Eric caught it, and
again held it between his outstretched hands.

'Heads!' cried Abel, a pallor sweeping over his face as he spoke. As
he leaned forward to look Sarah leaned forward too, and their heads
almost touched. He could feel her hair blowing on his cheek, and it
thrilled through him like fire. Eric lifted his upper hand; the coin
lay with its head up. Abel stepped forward and took Sarah in his arms.
With a curse Eric hurled the coin far into the sea. Then he leaned
against the flagstaff and scowled at the others with his hands thrust
deep into his pockets. Abel whispered wild words of passion and
delight into Sarah's ears, and as she listened she began to believe
that fortune had rightly interpreted the wishes of her secret heart,
and that she loved Abel best.

Presently Abel looked up and caught sight of Eric's face as the last
ray of sunset struck it. The red light intensified the natural
ruddiness of his complexion, and he looked as though he were steeped
in blood. Abel did not mind his scowl, for now that his own heart was
at rest he could feel unalloyed pity for his friend. He stepped over
meaning to comfort him, and held out his hand, saying:

'It was my chance, old lad. Don't grudge it me. I'll try to make Sarah
a happy woman, and you shall be a brother to us both!'

'Brother be damned!' was all the answer Eric made, as he turned away.
When he had gone a few steps down the rocky path he turned and came
back. Standing before Abel and Sarah, who had their arms round each
other, he said:

'You have a year. Make the most of it! And be sure you're in time to
claim your wife! Be back to have your banns up in time to be married
on the 11th April. If you're not, I tell you I shall have my banns up,
and you may get back too late.'

'What do you mean, Eric? You are mad!'

'No more mad than you are, Abel Behenna. You go, that's your chance! I
stay, that's mine! I don't mean to let the grass grow under my feet.
Sarah cared no more for you than for me five minutes ago, and she may
come back to that five minutes after you're gone! You won by a point
only--the game may change.'

'The game won't change!' said Abel shortly. 'Sarah, you'll be true to
me? You won't marry till I return?'

'For a year!' added Eric, quickly, 'that's the bargain.'

'I promise for the year,' said Sarah. A dark look came over Abel's
face, and he was about to speak, but he mastered himself and smiled.

'I mustn't be too hard or get angry tonight! Come, Eric! we played and
fought together. I won fairly. I played fairly all the game of our
wooing! You know that as well as I do; and now when I am going away, I
shall look to my old and true comrade to help me when I am gone!'

'I'll help you none,' said Eric, 'so help me God!'

'It was God helped me,' said Abel simply.

'Then let Him go on helping you,' said Eric angrily. 'The Devil is
good enough for me!' and without another word he rushed down the steep
path and disappeared behind the rocks.

When he had gone Abel hoped for some tender passage with Sarah, but
the first remark she made chilled him.

'How lonely it all seems without Eric!' and this note sounded till he
had left her at home--and after.

Early on the next morning Abel heard a noise at his door, and on going
out saw Eric walking rapidly away: a small canvas bag full of gold and
silver lay on the threshold; on a small slip of paper pinned to it was
written:

'Take the money and go. I stay. God for you! The Devil for me!
Remember the 11th of April.--ERIC SANSON.' That afternoon Abel went
off to Bristol, and a week later sailed on the _Star of the Sea_ bound
for Pahang. His money--including that which had been Eric's--was on
board in the shape of a venture of cheap toys. He had been advised by
a shrewd old mariner of Bristol whom he knew, and who knew the ways of
the Chersonese, who predicted that every penny invested would be
returned with a shilling to boot.

As the year wore on Sarah became more and more disturbed in her mind.
Eric was always at hand to make love to her in his own persistent,
masterful manner, and to this she did not object. Only one letter came
from Abel, to say that his venture had proved successful, and that he
had sent some two hundred pounds to the bank at Bristol, and was
trading with fifty pounds still remaining in goods for China, whither
the _Star of the Sea_ was bound and whence she would return to
Bristol. He suggested that Eric's share of the venture should be
returned to him with his share of the profits. This proposition was
treated with anger by Eric, and as simply childish by Sarah's mother.

More than six months had since then elapsed, but no other letter had
come, and Eric's hopes which had been dashed down by the letter from
Pahang, began to rise again. He perpetually assailed Sarah with an
'if!' If Abel did not return, would she then marry him? If the 11th
April went by without Abel being in the port, would she give him over?
If Abel had taken his fortune, and married another girl on the head of
it, would she marry him, Eric, as soon as the truth were known? And so
on in an endless variety of possibilities. The power of the strong
will and the determined purpose over the woman's weaker nature became
in time manifest. Sarah began to lose her faith in Abel and to regard
Eric as a possible husband; and a possible husband is in a woman's eye
different to all other men. A new affection for him began to arise in
her breast, and the daily familiarities of permitted courtship
furthered the growing affection. Sarah began to regard Abel as rather
a rock in the road of her life, and had it not been for her mother's
constantly reminding her of the good fortune already laid by in the
Bristol Bank she would have tried to have shut her eyes altogether to
the fact of Abel's existence.

The 11th April was Saturday, so that in order to have the marriage on
that day it would be necessary that the banns should be called on
Sunday, 22nd March. From the beginning of that month Eric kept
perpetually on the subject of Abel's absence, and his outspoken
opinion that the latter was either dead or married began to become a
reality to the woman's mind. As the first half of the month wore on
Eric became more jubilant, and after church on the 15th he took Sarah
for a walk to the Flagstaff Rock. There he asserted himself strongly:

'I told Abel, and you too, that if he was not here to put up his banns
in time for the eleventh, I would put up mine for the twelfth. Now the
time has come when I mean to do it. He hasn't kept his word'--here
Sarah struck in out of her weakness and indecision:

'He hasn't broken it yet!' Eric ground his teeth with anger.

'If you mean to stick up for him,' he said, as he smote his hands
savagely on the flagstaff, which sent forth a shivering murmur, 'well
and good. I'll keep my part of the bargain. On Sunday I shall give
notice of the banns, and you can deny them in the church if you will.
If Abel is in Pencastle on the eleventh, he can have them cancelled,
and his own put up; but till then, I take my course, and woe to anyone
who stands in my way!' With that he flung himself down the rocky
pathway, and Sarah could not but admire his Viking strength and
spirit, as, crossing the hill, he strode away along the cliffs towards
Bude.

During the week no news was heard of Abel, and on Saturday Eric gave
notice of the banns of marriage between himself and Sarah Trefusis.
The clergyman would have remonstrated with him, for although nothing
formal had been told to the neighbours, it had been understood since
Abel's departure that on his return he was to marry Sarah; but Eric
would not discuss the question.

'It is a painful subject, sir,' he said with a firmness which the
parson, who was a very young man, could not but be swayed by. 'Surely
there is nothing against Sarah or me. Why should there be any bones
made about the matter?' The parson said no more, and on the next day
he read out the banns for the first time amidst an audible buzz from
the congregation. Sarah was present, contrary to custom, and though
she blushed furiously enjoyed her triumph over the other girls whose
banns had not yet come. Before the week was over she began to make her
wedding dress. Eric used to come and look at her at work and the sight
thrilled through him. He used to say all sorts of pretty things to her
at such times, and there were to both delicious moments of
love-making.

The banns were read a second time on the 29th, and Eric's hope grew
more and more fixed though there were to him moments of acute despair
when he realised that the cup of happiness might be dashed from his
lips at any moment, right up to the last. At such times he was full of
passion--desperate and remorseless--and he ground his teeth and
clenched his hands in a wild way as though some taint of the old
Berserker fury of his ancestors still lingered in his blood. On the
Thursday of that week he looked in on Sarah and found her, amid a
flood of sunshine, putting finishing touches to her white wedding
gown. His own heart was full of gaiety, and the sight of the woman who
was so soon to be his own so occupied, filled him with a joy
unspeakable, and he felt faint with languorous ecstasy. Bending over
he kissed Sarah on the mouth, and then whispered in her rosy ear--

'Your wedding dress, Sarah! And for me!' As he drew back to admire her
she looked up saucily, and said to him--

'Perhaps not for you. There is more than a week yet for Abel!' and
then cried out in dismay, for with a wild gesture and a fierce oath
Eric dashed out of the house, banging the door behind him. The
incident disturbed Sarah more than she could have thought possible,
for it awoke all her fears and doubts and indecision afresh. She cried
a little, and put by her dress, and to soothe herself went out to sit
for a while on the summit of the Flagstaff Rock. When she arrived she
found there a little group anxiously discussing the weather. The sea
was calm and the sun bright, but across the sea were strange lines of
darkness and light, and close in to shore the rocks were fringed with
foam, which spread out in great white curves and circles as the
currents drifted. The wind had backed, and came in sharp, cold puffs.
The blow-hole, which ran under the Flagstaff Rock, from the rocky bay
without to the harbour within, was booming at intervals, and the
seagulls were screaming ceaselessly as they wheeled about the entrance
of the port.

'It looks bad,' she heard an old fisherman say to the coastguard. 'I
seen it just like this once before, when the East Indiaman
_Coromandel_ went to pieces in Dizzard Bay!' Sarah did not wait to
hear more. She was of a timid nature where danger was concerned, and
could not bear to hear of wrecks and disasters. She went home and
resumed the completion of her dress, secretly determined to appease
Eric when she should meet him with a sweet apology--and to take the
earliest opportunity of being even with him after her marriage. The
old fisherman's weather prophecy was justified. That night at dusk a
wild storm came on. The sea rose and lashed the western coasts from
Skye to Scilly and left a tale of disaster everywhere. The sailors and
fishermen of Pencastle all turned out on the rocks and cliffs and
watched eagerly. Presently, by a flash of lightning, a 'ketch' was
seen drifting under only a jib about half-a-mile outside the port. All
eyes and all glasses were concentrated on her, waiting for the next
flash, and when it came a chorus went up that it was the _Lovely
Alice_, trading between Bristol and Penzance, and touching at all the
little ports between. 'God help them!' said the harbour-master, 'for
nothing in this world can save them when they are between Bude and
Tintagel and the wind on shore!' The coastguards exerted themselves,
and, aided by brave hearts and willing hands, they brought the rocket
apparatus up on the summit of the Flagstaff Rock. Then they burned
blue lights so that those on board might see the harbour opening in
case they could make any effort to reach it. They worked gallantly
enough on board; but no skill or strength of man could avail. Before
many minutes were over the _Lovely Alice_ rushed to her doom on the
great island rock that guarded the mouth of the port. The screams of
those on board were faintly borne on the tempest as they flung
themselves into the sea in a last chance for life. The blue lights
were kept burning, and eager eyes peered into the depths of the waters
in case any face could be seen; and ropes were held ready to fling out
in aid. But never a face was seen, and the willing arms rested idle.
Eric was there amongst his fellows. His old Icelandic origin was
never more apparent than in that wild hour. He took a rope, and
shouted in the ear of the harbour-master:

'I shall go down on the rock over the seal cave. The tide is running
up, and someone may drift in there!'

'Keep back, man!' came the answer. 'Are you mad? One slip on that rock
and you are lost: and no man could keep his feet in the dark on such a
place in such a tempest!'

'Not a bit,' came the reply. 'You remember how Abel Behenna saved me
there on a night like this when my boat went on the Gull Rock. He
dragged me up from the deep water in the seal cave, and now someone
may drift in there again as I did,' and he was gone into the darkness.
The projecting rock hid the light on the Flagstaff Rock, but he knew
his way too well to miss it. His boldness and sureness of foot
standing to him, he shortly stood on the great round-topped rock cut
away beneath by the action of the waves over the entrance of the seal
cave, where the water was fathomless. There he stood in comparative
safety, for the concave shape of the rock beat back the waves with
their own force, and though the water below him seemed to boil like a
seething cauldron, just beyond the spot there was a space of almost
calm. The rock, too, seemed here to shut off the sound of the gale,
and he listened as well as watched. As he stood there ready, with his
coil of rope poised to throw, he thought he heard below him, just
beyond the whirl of the water, a faint, despairing cry. He echoed it
with a shout that rang into the night Then he waited for the flash of
lightning, and as it passed flung his rope out into the darkness where
he had seen a face rising through the swirl of the foam. The rope was
caught, for he felt a pull on it, and he shouted again in his mighty
voice:

'Tie it round your waist, and I shall pull you up.' Then when he felt
that it was fast he moved along the rock to the far side of the sea
cave, where the deep water was something stiller, and where he could
get foothold secure enough to drag the rescued man on the overhanging
rock. He began to pull, and shortly he knew from the rope taken in
that the man he was now rescuing must soon be close to the top of the
rock. He steadied himself for a moment, and drew a long breath, that
he might at the next effort complete the rescue. He had just bent his
back to the work when a flash of lightning revealed to each other the
two men--the rescuer and the rescued.

Eric Sanson and Abel Behenna were face to face--and none knew of the
meeting save themselves; and God.

On the instant a wave of passion swept through Eric's heart. All his
hopes were shattered, and with the hatred of Cain his eyes looked out.
He saw in the instant of recognition the joy in Abel's face that his
was the hand to succour him, and this intensified his hate. Whilst the
passion was on him he started back, and the rope ran out between his
hands. His moment of hate was followed by an impulse of his better
manhood, but it was too late.

Before he could recover himself, Abel encumbered with the rope that
should have aided him, was plunged with a despairing cry back into the
darkness of the devouring sea.

Then, feeling all the madness and the doom of Cain upon him, Eric
rushed back over the rocks, heedless of the danger and eager only for
one thing--to be amongst other people whose living noises would shut
out that last cry which seemed to ring still in his ears. When he
regained the Flagstaff Rock the men surrounded him, and through the
fury of the storm he heard the harbour-master say:--

'We feared you were lost when we heard a cry! How white you are! Where
is your rope? Was there anyone drifted in?'

'No one,' he shouted in answer, for he felt that he could never
explain that he had let his old comrade slip back into the sea, and at
the very place and under the very circumstances in which that comrade
had saved his own life. He hoped by one bold lie to set the matter at
rest for ever. There was no one to bear witness--and if he should have
to carry that still white face in his eyes and that despairing cry in
his ears for evermore--at least none should know of it. 'No one,' he
cried, more loudly still. 'I slipped on the rock, and the rope fell
into the sea!' So saying he left them, and, rushing down the steep
path, gained his own cottage and locked himself within.

The remainder of that night he passed lying on his bed--dressed and
motionless--staring upwards, and seeming to see through the darkness a
pale face gleaming wet in the lightning, with its glad recognition
turning to ghastly despair, and to hear a cry which never ceased to
echo in his soul.

In the morning the storm was over and all was smiling again, except
that the sea was still boisterous with its unspent fury. Great pieces
of wreck drifted into the port, and the sea around the island rock was
strewn with others. Two bodies also drifted into the harbour--one the
master of the wrecked ketch, the other a strange seaman whom no one
knew.

Sarah saw nothing of Eric till the evening, and then he only looked
in for a minute. He did not come into the house, but simply put his
head in through the open window.

'Well, Sarah,' he called out in a loud voice, though to her it did not
ring truly, 'is the wedding dress done? Sunday week, mind! Sunday
week!'

Sarah was glad to have the reconciliation so easy; but, womanlike,
when she saw the storm was over and her own fears groundless, she at
once repeated the cause of offence.

'Sunday so be it,' she said without looking up, 'if Abel isn't there
on Saturday!' Then she looked up saucily, though her heart was full of
fear of another outburst on the part of her impetuous lover. But the
window was empty; Eric had taken himself off, and with a pout she
resumed her work. She saw Eric no more till Sunday afternoon, after
the banns had been called the third time, when he came up to her
before all the people with an air of proprietorship which half-pleased
and half-annoyed her.

'Not yet, mister!' she said, pushing him away, as the other girls
giggled. 'Wait till Sunday next, if you please--the day after
Saturday!' she added, looking at him saucily. The girls giggled again,
and the young men guffawed. They thought it was the snub that touched
him so that he became as white as a sheet as he turned away. But
Sarah, who knew more than they did, laughed, for she saw triumph
through the spasm of pain that overspread his face.

The week passed uneventfully; however, as Saturday drew nigh Sarah had
occasional moments of anxiety, and as to Eric he went about at
night-time like a man possessed. He restrained himself when others
were by, but now and again he went down amongst the rocks and caves
and shouted aloud. This seemed to relieve him somewhat, and he was
better able to restrain himself for some time after. All Saturday he
stayed in his own house and never left it. As he was to be married on
the morrow, the neighbours thought it was shyness on his part, and did
not trouble or notice him. Only once was he disturbed, and that was
when the chief boatman came to him and sat down, and after a pause
said:

'Eric, I was over in Bristol yesterday. I was in the ropemaker's
getting a coil to replace the one you lost the night of the storm, and
there I saw Michael Heavens of this place, who is a salesman there. He
told me that Abel Behenna had come home the week ere last on the _Star
of the Sea_ from Canton, and that he had lodged a sight of money in
the Bristol Bank in the name of Sarah Behenna. He told Michael so
himself--and that he had taken passage on the _Lovely Alice_ to
Pencastle. 'Bear up, man,' for Eric had with a groan dropped his head
on his knees, with his face between his hands. 'He was your old
comrade, I know, but you couldn't help him. He must have gone down
with the rest that awful night. I thought I'd better tell you, lest it
might come some other way, and you might keep Sarah Trefusis from
being frightened. They were good friends once, and women take these
things to heart. It would not do to let her be pained with such a
thing on her wedding day!' Then he rose and went away, leaving Eric
still sitting disconsolately with his head on his knees.

'Poor fellow!' murmured the chief boatman to himself; 'he takes it to
heart. Well, well! right enough! They were true comrades once, and
Abel saved him!'

The afternoon of that day, when the children had left school, they
strayed as usual on half-holidays along' the quay and the paths by the
cliffs. Presently some of them came running in a state of great
excitement to the harbour, where a few men were unloading a coal
ketch, and a great many were superintending the operation. One of the
children called out:

'There is a porpoise in the harbour mouth! We saw it come through the
blow-hole! It had a long tail, and was deep under the water!'

'It was no porpoise,' said another; 'it was a seal; but it had a long
tail! It came out of the seal cave!' The other children bore various
testimony, but on two points they were unanimous--it, whatever 'it'
was, had come through the blow-hole deep under the water, and had a
long, thin tail--a tail so long that they could not see the end of it.
There was much unmerciful chaffing of the children by the men on this
point, but as it was evident that they had seen something, quite a
number of persons, young and old, male and female, went along the high
paths on either side of the harbour mouth to catch a glimpse of this
new addition to the fauna of the sea, a long-tailed porpoise or seal.
The tide was now coming in. There was a slight breeze, and the surface
of the water was rippled so that it was only at moments that anyone
could see clearly into the deep water. After a spell of watching a
woman called out that she saw something moving up the channel, just
below where she was standing. There was a stampede to the spot, but by
the time the crowd had gathered the breeze had freshened, and it was
impossible to see with any distinctness below the surface of the
water. On being questioned the woman described what she had seen, but
in such an incoherent way that the whole thing was put down as an
effect of imagination; had it not been for the children's report she
would not have been credited at all. Her semi-hysterical statement
that what she saw was 'like a pig with the entrails out' was only
thought anything of by an old coastguard, who shook his head but did
not make any remark. For the remainder of the daylight this man was
seen always on the bank, looking into the water, but always with
disappointment manifest on his face.

Eric arose early on the next morning--he had not slept all night, and
it was a relief to him to move about in the light. He shaved himself
with a hand that did not tremble, and dressed himself in his wedding
clothes. There was a haggard look on his face, and he seemed as though
he had grown years older in the last few days. Still there was a wild,
uneasy light of triumph in his eyes, and he kept murmuring to himself
over and over again:

'This is my wedding-day! Abel cannot claim her now--living or
dead!--living or dead! Living or dead!' He sat in his arm-chair,
waiting with an uncanny quietness for the church hour to arrive. When
the bell began to ring he arose and passed out of his house, closing
the door behind him. He looked at the river and saw the tide had just
turned. In the church he sat with Sarah and her mother, holding
Sarah's hand tightly in his all the time, as though he feared to lose
her. When the service was over they stood up together, and were
married in the presence of the entire congregation; for no one left
the church. Both made the responses clearly--Eric's being even on the
defiant side. When the wedding was over Sarah took her husband's arm,
and they walked away together, the boys and younger girls being cuffed
by their elders into a decorous behaviour, for they would fain have
followed close behind their heels.

The way from the church led down to the back of Eric's cottage, a
narrow passage being between it and that of his next neighbour. When
the bridal couple had passed through this the remainder of the
congregation, who had followed them at a little distance, were
startled by a long, shrill scream from the bride. They rushed through
the passage and found her on the bank with wild eyes, pointing to the
river bed opposite Eric Sanson's door.

The falling tide had deposited there the body of Abel Behenna stark
upon the broken rocks. The rope trailing from its waist had been
twisted by the current round the mooring post, and had held it back
whilst the tide had ebbed away from it. The right elbow had fallen in
a chink in the rock, leaving the hand outstretched toward Sarah, with
the open palm upward as though it were extended to receive hers, the
pale drooping fingers open to the clasp.

All that happened afterwards was never quite known to Sarah Sanson.
Whenever she would try to recollect there would become a buzzing in
her ears and a dimness in her eyes, and all would pass away. The only
thing that she could remember of it all--and this she never
forgot--was Eric's breathing heavily, with his face whiter than that
of the dead man, as he muttered under his breath:

'Devil's help! Devil's faith! Devil's price!'



The Burial of the Rats


Leaving Paris by the Orleans road, cross the Enceinte, and, turning to
the right, you find yourself in a somewhat wild and not at all savoury
district. Right and left, before and behind, on every side rise great
heaps of dust and waste accumulated by the process of time.

Paris has its night as well as its day life, and the sojourner who
enters his hotel in the Rue de Rivoli or the Rue St. Honore late at
night or leaves it early in the morning, can guess, in coming near
Montrouge--if he has not done so already--the purpose of those great
waggons that look like boilers on wheels which he finds halting
everywhere as he passes.

Every city has its peculiar institutions created out of its own needs;
and one of the most notable institutions of Paris is its rag-picking
population. In the early morning--and Parisian life commences at an
early hour--may be seen in most streets standing on the pathway
opposite every court and alley and between every few houses, as still
in some American cities, even in parts of New York, large wooden boxes
into which the domestics or tenement-holders empty the accumulated
dust of the past day. Round these boxes gather and pass on, when the
work is done, to fresh fields of labour and pastures new, squalid
hungry-looking men and women, the implements of whose craft consist
of a coarse bag or basket slung over the shoulder and a little rake
with which they turn over and probe and examine in the minutest manner
the dustbins. They pick up and deposit in their baskets, by aid of
their rakes, whatever they may find, with the same facility as a
Chinaman uses his chopsticks.

Paris is a city of centralisation--and centralisation and
classification are closely allied. In the early times, when
centralisation is becoming a fact, its forerunner is classification.
All things which are similar or analogous become grouped together, and
from the grouping of groups rises one whole or central point. We see
radiating many long arms with innumerable tentaculae, and in the
centre rises a gigantic head with a comprehensive brain and keen eyes
to look on every side and ears sensitive to hear--and a voracious
mouth to swallow.

Other cities resemble all the birds and beasts and fishes whose
appetites and digestions are normal. Paris alone is the analogical
apotheosis of the octopus. Product of centralisation carried to an _ad
absurdum_, it fairly represents the devil fish; and in no respects is
the resemblance more curious than in the similarity of the digestive
apparatus.

Those intelligent tourists who, having surrendered their individuality
into the hands of Messrs. Cook or Gaze, 'do' Paris in three days, are
often puzzled to know how it is that the dinner which in London would
cost about six shillings, can be had for three francs in a café in the
Palais Royal. They need have no more wonder if they will but consider
the classification which is a theoretic speciality of Parisian life,
and adopt all round the fact from which the chiffonier has his
genesis.

The Paris of 1850 was not like the Paris of to-day, and those who see
the Paris of Napoleon and Baron Hausseman can hardly realise the
existence of the state of things forty-five years ago.

Amongst other things, however, which have not changed are those
districts where the waste is gathered. Dust is dust all the world
over, in every age, and the family likeness of dust-heaps is perfect.
The traveller, therefore, who visits the environs of Montrouge can go
go back in fancy without difficulty to the year 1850.

In this year I was making a prolonged stay in Paris. I was very much
in love with a young lady who, though she returned my passion, so far
yielded to the wishes of her parents that she had promised not to see
me or to correspond with me for a year. I, too, had been compelled to
accede to these conditions under a vague hope of parental approval.
During the term of probation I had promised to remain out of the
country and not to write to my dear one until the expiration of the
year.

Naturally the time went heavily with me. There was not one of my own
family or circle who could tell me of Alice, and none of her own folk
had, I am sorry to say, sufficient generosity to send me even an
occasional word of comfort regarding her health and well-being. I
spent six months wandering about Europe, but as I could find no
satisfactory distraction in travel, I determined to come to Paris,
where, at least, I would be within easy hail of London in case any
good fortune should call me thither before the appointed time. That
'hope deferred maketh the heart sick' was never better exemplified
than in my case, for in addition to the perpetual longing to see the
face I loved there was always with me a harrowing anxiety lest some
accident should prevent me showing Alice in due time that I had,
throughout the long period of probation, been faithful to her trust
and my own love. Thus, every adventure which I undertook had a fierce
pleasure of its own, for it was fraught with possible consequences
greater than it would have ordinarily borne.

Like all travellers I exhausted the places of most interest in the
first month of my stay, and was driven in the second month to look for
amusement whithersoever I might. Having made sundry journeys to the
better-known suburbs, I began to see that there was a _terra
incognita_, in so far as the guide book was concerned, in the social
wilderness lying between these attractive points. Accordingly I began
to systematise my researches, and each day took up the thread of my
exploration at the place where I had on the previous day dropped it.

In the process of time my wanderings led me near Montrouge, and I saw
that hereabouts lay the Ultima Thule of social exploration--a country
as little known as that round the source of the White Nile. And so I
determined to investigate philosophically the chiffonier--his habitat,
his life, and his means of life.

The job was an unsavoury one, difficult of accomplishment, and with
little hope of adequate reward. However, despite reason, obstinacy
prevailed, and I entered into my new investigation with a keener
energy than I could have summoned to aid me in any investigation
leading to any end, valuable or worthy.

One day, late in a fine afternoon, toward the end of September, I
entered the holy of holies of the city of dust. The place was
evidently the recognised abode of a number of chiffoniers, for some
sort of arrangement was manifested in the formation of the dust heaps
near the road. I passed amongst these heaps, which stood like orderly
sentries, determined to penetrate further and trace dust to its
ultimate location.

As I passed along I saw behind the dust heaps a few forms that flitted
to and fro, evidently watching with interest the advent of any
stranger to such a place. The district was like a small Switzerland,
and as I went forward my tortuous course shut out the path behind me.

Presently I got into what seemed a small city or community of
chiffoniers. There were a number of shanties or huts, such as may be
met with in the remote parts of the Bog of Allan--rude places with
wattled walls, plastered with mud and roofs of rude thatch made from
stable refuse--such places as one would not like to enter for any
consideration, and which even in water-colour could only look
picturesque if judiciously treated. In the midst of these huts was one
of the strangest adaptations--I cannot say habitations--I had ever
seen. An immense old wardrobe, the colossal remnant of some boudoir of
Charles VII, or Henry II, had been converted into a dwelling-house.
The double doors lay open, so that the entire ménage was open to
public view. In the open half of the wardrobe was a common
sitting-room of some four feet by six, in which sat, smoking their
pipes round a charcoal brazier, no fewer than six old soldiers of the
First Republic, with their uniforms torn and worn threadbare.
Evidently they were of the _mauvais sujet_ class; their bleary eyes
and limp jaws told plainly of a common love of absinthe; and their
eyes had that haggard, worn look of slumbering ferocity which follows
hard in the wake of drink. The other side stood as of old, with its
shelves intact, save that they were cut to half their depth, and in
each shelf of which there were six, was a bed made with rags and
straw. The half-dozen of worthies who inhabited this structure looked
at me curiously as I passed; and when I looked back after going a
little way I saw their heads together in a whispered conference. I did
not like the look of this at all, for the place was very lonely, and
the men looked very, very villainous. However, I did not see any cause
for fear, and went on my way, penetrating further and further into the
Sahara. The way was tortuous to a degree, and from going round in a
series of semi-circles, as one goes in skating with the Dutch roll, I
got rather confused with regard to the points of the compass.

When I had penetrated a little way I saw, as I turned the corner of a
half-made heap, sitting on a heap of straw an old soldier with
threadbare coat.

'Hallo!' said I to myself; 'the First Republic is well represented
here in its soldiery.'

As I passed him the old man never even looked up at me, but gazed on
the ground with stolid persistency. Again I remarked to myself: 'See
what a life of rude warfare can do! This old man's curiosity is a
thing of the past.'

When I had gone a few steps, however, I looked back suddenly, and saw
that curiosity was not dead, for the veteran had raised his head and
was regarding me with a very queer expression. He seemed to me to look
very like one of the six worthies in the press. When he saw me looking
he dropped his head; and without thinking further of him I went on my
way, satisfied that there was a strange likeness between these old
warriors.

Presently I met another old soldier in a similar manner. He, too, did
not notice me whilst I was passing.

By this time it was getting late in the afternoon, and I began to
think of retracing my steps. Accordingly I turned to go back, but
could see a number of tracks leading between different mounds and
could not ascertain which of them I should take. In my perplexity I
wanted to see someone of whom to ask the way, but could see no one. I
determined to go on a few mounds further and so try to see
someone--not a veteran.

I gained my object, for after going a couple of hundred yards I saw
before me a single shanty such as I had seen before--with, however,
the difference that this was not one for living in, but merely a roof
with three walls open in front. From the evidences which the
neighbourhood exhibited I took it to be a place for sorting. Within it
was an old woman wrinkled and bent with age; I approached her to ask
the way.

She rose as I came close and I asked her my way. She immediately
commenced a conversation; and it occurred to me that here in the very
centre of the Kingdom of Dust was the place to gather details of the
history of Parisian rag-picking--particularly as I could do so from
the lips of one who looked like the oldest inhabitant.

I began my inquiries, and the old woman gave me most interesting
answers--she had been one of the ceteuces who sat daily before the
guillotine and had taken an active part among the women who signalised
themselves by their violence in the revolution. While we were talking
she said suddenly: 'But m'sieur must be tired standing,' and dusted a
rickety old stool for me to sit down. I hardly liked to do so for many
reasons; but the poor old woman was so civil that I did not like to
run the risk of hurting her by refusing, and moreover the conversation
of one who had been at the taking of the Bastille was so interesting
that I sat down and so our conversation went on.

While we were talking an old man--older and more bent and wrinkled
even than the woman--appeared from behind the shanty. 'Here is
Pierre,' said she. 'M'sieur can hear stories now if he wishes, for
Pierre was in everything, from the Bastille to Waterloo.' The old man
took another stool at my request and we plunged into a sea of
revolutionary reminiscences. This old man, albeit clothed like a
scarecrow, was like any one of the six veterans.

I was now sitting in the centre of the low hut with the woman on my
left hand and the man on my right, each of them being somewhat in
front of me. The place was full of all sorts of curious objects of
lumber, and of many things that I wished far away. In one corner was a
heap of rags which seemed to move from the number of vermin it
contained, and in the other a heap of bones whose odour was something
shocking. Every now and then, glancing at the heaps, I could see the
gleaming eyes of some of the rats which infested the place. These
loathsome objects were bad enough, but what looked even more dreadful
was an old butcher's axe with an iron handle stained with clots of
blood leaning up against the wall on the right hand side. Still, these
things did not give me much concern. The talk of the two old people
was so fascinating that I stayed on and on, till the evening came and
the dust heaps threw dark shadows over the vales between them.

After a time I began to grow uneasy. I could not tell how or why, but
somehow I did not feel satisfied. Uneasiness is an instinct and means
warning. The psychic faculties are often the sentries of the
intellect, and when they sound alarm the reason begins to act,
although perhaps not consciously.

This was so with me. I began to bethink me where I was and by what
surrounded, and to wonder how I should fare in case I should be
attacked; and then the thought suddenly burst upon me, although
without any overt cause, that I was in danger. Prudence whispered: 'Be
still and make no sign,' and so I was still and made no sign, for I
knew that four cunning eyes were on me. 'Four eyes--if not more.' My
God, what a horrible thought! The whole shanty might be surrounded on
three sides with villains! I might be in the midst of a band of such
desperadoes as only half a century of periodic revolution can produce.

With a sense of danger my intellect and observation quickened, and I
grew more watchful than was my wont. I noticed that the old woman's
eyes were constantly wandering towards my hands. I looked at them too,
and saw the cause--my rings. On my left little finger I had a large
signet and on the right a good diamond.

I thought that if there was any danger my first care was to avert
suspicion. Accordingly I began to work the conversation round to
rag-picking--to the drains--of the things found there; and so by easy
stages to jewels. Then, seizing a favourable opportunity, I asked the
old woman if she knew anything of such things. She answered that she
did, a little. I held out my right hand, and, showing her the diamond,
asked her what she thought of that. She answered that her eyes were
bad, and stooped over my hand. I said as nonchalantly as I could:
'Pardon me! You will see better thus!' and taking it off handed it to
her. An unholy light came into her withered old face, as she touched
it. She stole one glance at me swift and keen as a flash of lightning.

She bent over the ring for a moment, her face quite concealed as
though examining it. The old man looked straight out of the front of
the shanty before him, at the same time fumbling in his pockets and
producing a screw of tobacco in a paper and a pipe, which he proceeded
to fill. I took advantage of the pause and the momentary rest from the
searching eyes on my face to look carefully round the place, now dim
and shadowy in the gloaming. There still lay all the heaps of varied
reeking foulness; there the terrible blood-stained axe leaning against
the wall in the right hand corner, and everywhere, despite the gloom,
the baleful glitter of the eyes of the rats. I could see them even
through some of the chinks of the boards at the back low down close to
the ground. But stay! these latter eyes seemed more than usually large
and bright and baleful!

For an instant my heart stood still, and I felt in that whirling
condition of mind in which one feels a sort of spiritual drunkenness,
and as though the body is only maintained erect in that there is no
time for it to fall before recovery. Then, in another second, I was
calm--coldly calm, with all my energies in full vigour, with a
self-control which I felt to be perfect and with all my feeling and
instincts alert.

Now I knew the full extent of my danger: I was watched and surrounded
by desperate people! I could not even guess at how many of them were
lying there on the ground behind the shanty, waiting for the moment to
strike. I knew that I was big and strong, and they knew it, too. They
knew also, as I did, that I was an Englishman and would make a fight
for it; and so we waited. I had, I felt, gained an advantage in the
last few seconds, for I knew my danger and understood the situation.
Now, I thought, is the test of my courage--the enduring test: the
fighting test may come later!

The old woman raised her head and said to me in a satisfied kind of
way:

'A very fine ring, indeed--a beautiful ring! Oh, me! I once had such
rings, plenty of them, and bracelets and earrings! Oh! for in those
fine days I led the town a dance! But they've forgotten me now!
They've forgotten me! They? Why they never heard of me! Perhaps their
grandfathers remember me, some of them!' and she laughed a harsh,
croaking laugh. And then I am bound to say that she astonished me, for
she handed me back the ring with a certain suggestion of old-fashioned
grace which was not without its pathos.

The old man eyed her with a sort of sudden ferocity, half rising from
his stool, and said to me suddenly and hoarsely:

'Let me see!'

I was about to hand the ring when the old woman said:

'No! no, do not give it to Pierre! Pierre is eccentric. He loses
things; and such a pretty ring!'

'Cat!' said the old man, savagely. Suddenly the old woman said, rather
more loudly than was necessary:

'Wait! I shall tell you something about a ring.' There was something
in the sound of her voice that jarred upon me. Perhaps it was my
hyper-sensitiveness, wrought up as I was to such a pitch of nervous
excitement, but I seemed to think that she was not addressing me. As I
stole a glance round the place I saw the eyes of the rats in the bone
heaps, but missed the eyes along the back. But even as I looked I saw
them again appear. The old woman's 'Wait!' had given me a respite from
attack, and the men had sunk back to their reclining posture.

'I once lost a ring--a beautiful diamond hoop that had belonged to a
queen, and which was given to me by a farmer of the taxes, who
afterwards cut his throat because I sent him away. I thought it must
have been stolen, and taxed my people; but I could get no trace. The
police came and suggested that it had found its way to the drain. We
descended--I in my fine clothes, for I would not trust them with my
beautiful ring! I know more of the drains since then, and of rats,
too! but I shall never forget the horror of that place--alive with
blazing eyes, a wall of them just outside the light of our torches.
Well, we got beneath my house. We searched the outlet of the drain,
and there in the filth found my ring, and we came out.

'But we found something else also before we came! As we were coming
toward the opening a lot of sewer rats--human ones this time--came
towards us. They told the police that one of their number had gone
into the drain, but had not returned. He had gone in only shortly
before we had, and, if lost, could hardly be far off. They asked help
to seek him, so we turned back. They tried to prevent me going, but I
insisted. It was a new excitement, and had I not recovered my ring?
Not far did we go till we came on something. There was but little
water, and the bottom of the drain was raised with brick, rubbish, and
much matter of the kind. He had made a fight for it, even when his
torch had gone out. But they were too many for him! They had not been
long about it! The bones were still warm; but they were picked clean.
They had even eaten their own dead ones and there were bones of rats
as well as of the man. They took it cool enough those other--the human
ones--and joked of their comrade when they found him dead, though they
would have helped him living. Bah! what matters it--life or death?'

'And had you no fear?' I asked her.

'Fear!' she said with a laugh. 'Me have fear? Ask Pierre! But I was
younger then, and, as I came through that horrible drain with its wall
of greedy eyes, always moving with the circle of the light from the
torches, I did not feel easy. I kept on before the men, though! It is
a way I have! I never let the men get it before me. All I want is a
chance and a means! And they ate him up--took every trace away except
the bones; and no one knew it, nor no sound of him was ever heard!'
Here she broke into a chuckling fit of the ghastliest merriment which
it was ever my lot to hear and see. A great poetess describes her
heroine singing: 'Oh! to see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which
is the divinest.'

And I can apply the same idea to the old crone--in all save the
divinity, for I scarce could tell which was the most hellish--the
harsh, malicious, satisfied, cruel laugh, or the leering grin, and the
horrible square opening of the mouth like a tragic mask, and the
yellow gleam of the few discoloured teeth in the shapeless gums. In
that laugh and with that grin and the chuckling satisfaction I knew as
well as if it had been spoken to me in words of thunder that my murder
was settled, and the murderers only bided the proper time for its
accomplishment. I could read between the lines of her gruesome story
the commands to her accomplices. 'Wait,' she seemed to say, 'bide your
time. I shall strike the first blow. Find the weapon for me, and I
shall make the opportunity! He shall not escape! Keep him quiet, and
then no one will be wiser. There will be no outcry, and the rats will
do their work!'

It was growing darker and darker; the night was coming. I stole a
glance round the shanty, still all the same! The bloody axe in the
corner, the heaps of filth, and the eyes on the bone heaps and in the
crannies of the floor.

Pierre had been still ostensibly filling his pipe; he now struck a
light and began to puff away at it. The old woman said:

'Dear heart, how dark it is! Pierre, like a good lad, light the lamp!'

Pierre got up and with the lighted match in his hand touched the wick
of a lamp which hung at one side of the entrance to the shanty, and
which had a reflector that threw the light all over the place. It was
evidently that which was used for their sorting at night.

'Not that, stupid! Not that! the lantern!' she called out to him.

He immediately blew it out, saying: 'All right, mother I'll find it,'
and he hustled about the left corner of the room--the old woman saying
through the darkness:

The lantern! the lantern! Oh! That is the light that is most useful to
us poor folks. The lantern was the friend of the revolution! It is the
friend of the chiffonier! It helps us when all else fails.'

Hardly had she said the word when there was a kind of creaking of the
whole place, and something was steadily dragged over the roof.

Again I seemed to read between the lines of her words. I knew the
lesson of the lantern.

'One of you get on the roof with a noose and strangle him as he passes
out if we fail within.'

As I looked out of the opening I saw the loop of a rope outlined black
against the lurid sky. I was now, indeed, beset!

Pierre was not long in finding the lantern. I kept my eyes fixed
through the darkness on the old woman. Pierre struck his light, and by
its flash I saw the old woman raise from the ground beside her where
it had mysteriously appeared, and then hide in the folds of her gown,
a long sharp knife or dagger. It seemed to be like a butcher's
sharpening iron fined to a keen point.

The lantern was lit.

'Bring it here, Pierre,' she said. 'Place it in the doorway where we
can see it. See how nice it is! It shuts out the darkness from us; it
is just right!'

Just right for her and her purposes! It threw all its light on my
face, leaving in gloom the faces of both Pierre and the woman, who sat
outside of me on each side.

I felt that the time of action was approaching, but I knew now that
the first signal and movement would come from the woman, and so
watched her.

I was all unarmed, but I had made up my mind what to do. At the first
movement I would seize the butcher's axe in the right-hand corner and
fight my way out. At least, I would die hard. I stole a glance round
to fix its exact locality so that I could not fail to seize it at the
first effort, for then, if ever, time and accuracy would be precious.

Good God! It was gone! All the horror of the situation burst upon me;
but the bitterest thought of all was that if the issue of the terrible
position should be against me Alice would infallibly suffer. Either
she would believe me false--and any lover, or any one who has ever
been one, can imagine the bitterness of the thought--or else she would
go on loving long after I had been lost to her and to the world, so
that her life would be broken and embittered, shattered with
disappointment and despair. The very magnitude of the pain braced me
up and nerved me to bear the dread scrutiny of the plotters.

I think I did not betray myself. The old woman was watching me as a
cat does a mouse; she had her right hand hidden in the folds of her
gown, clutching, I knew, that long, cruel-looking dagger. Had she seen
any disappointment in my face she would, I felt, have known that the
moment had come, and would have sprung on me like a tigress, certain
of taking me unprepared.

I looked out into the night, and there I saw new cause for danger.
Before and around the hut were at a little distance some shadowy
forms; they were quite still, but I knew that they were all alert and
on guard. Small chance for me now in that direction.

Again I stole a glance round the place. In moments of great excitement
and of great danger, which is excitement, the mind works very quickly,
and the keenness of the faculties which depend on the mind grows in
proportion. I now felt this. In an instant I took in the whole
situation. I saw that the axe had been taken through a small hole made
in one of the rotten boards. How rotten they must be to allow of such
a thing being done without a particle of noise.

The hut was a regular murder-trap, and was guarded all around. A
garroter lay on the roof ready to entangle me with his noose if I
should escape the dagger of the old hag. In front the way was guarded
by I know not how many watchers. And at the back was a row of
desperate men--I had seen their eyes still through the crack in the
boards of the floor, when last I looked--as they lay prone waiting for
the signal to start erect. If it was to be ever, now for it!

As nonchalantly as I could I turned slightly on my stool so as to get
my right leg well under me. Then with a sudden jump, turning my head,
and guarding it with my hands, and with the fighting instinct of the
knights of old, I breathed my lady's name, and hurled myself against
the back wall of the hut.

Watchful as they were, the suddenness of my movement surprised both
Pierre and the old woman. As I crashed through the rotten timbers I
saw the old woman rise with a leap like a tiger and heard her low gasp
of baffled rage. My feet lit on something that moved, and as I jumped
away I knew that I had stepped on the back of one of the row of men
lying on their faces outside the hut. I was torn with nails and
splinters, but otherwise unhurt. Breathless I rushed up the mound in
front of me, hearing as I went the dull crash of the shanty as it
collapsed into a mass.

It was a nightmare climb. The mound, though but low, was awfully
steep, and with each step I took the mass of dust and cinders tore
down with me and gave way under my feet. The dust rose and choked me;
it was sickening, foetid, awful; but my climb was, I felt, for life or
death, and I struggled on. The seconds seemed hours; but the few
moments I had in starting, combined with my youth and strength, gave
me a great advantage, and, though several forms struggled after me in
deadly silence which was more dreadful than any sound, I easily
reached the top. Since then I have climbed the cone of Vesuvius, and
as I struggled up that dreary steep amid the sulphurous fumes the
memory of that awful night at Montrouge came back to me so vividly
that I almost grew faint.

The mound was one of the tallest in the region of dust, and as I
struggled to the top, panting for breath and with my heart beating
like a sledge-hammer, I saw away to my left the dull red gleam of the
sky, and nearer still the flashing of lights. Thank God! I knew where
I was now and where lay the road to Paris!

For two or three seconds I paused and looked back. My pursuers were
still well behind me, but struggling up resolutely, and in deadly
silence. Beyond, the shanty was a wreck--a mass of timber and moving
forms. I could see it well, for flames were already bursting out; the
rags and straw had evidently caught fire from the lantern. Still
silence there! Not a sound! These old wretches could die game, anyhow.

I had no time for more than a passing glance, for as I cast an eye
round the mound preparatory to making my descent I saw several dark
forms rushing round on either side to cut me off on my way. It was now
a race for life. They were trying to head me on my way to Paris, and
with the instinct of the moment I dashed down to the right-hand side.
I was just in time, for, though I came as it seemed to me down the
steep in a few steps, the wary old men who were watching me turned
back, and one, as I rushed by into the opening between the two mounds
in front, almost struck me a blow with that terrible butcher's axe.
There could surely not be two such weapons about!

Then began a really horrible chase. I easily ran ahead of the old men,
and even when some younger ones and a few women joined in the hunt I
easily distanced them. But I did not know the way, and I could not
even guide myself by the light in the sky, for I was running away from
it. I had heard that, unless of conscious purpose, hunted men turn
always to the left, and so I found it now; and so, I suppose, knew
also my pursuers, who were more animals than men, and with cunning or
instinct had found out such secrets for themselves: for on finishing
a quick spurt, after which I intended to take a moment's breathing
space, I suddenly saw ahead of me two or three forms swiftly passing
behind a mound to the right.

I was in the spider's web now indeed! But with the thought of this new
danger came the resource of the hunted, and so I darted down the next
turning to the right. I continued in this direction for some hundred
yards, and then, making a turn to the left again, felt certain that I
had, at any rate, avoided the danger of being surrounded.

But not of pursuit, for on came the rabble after me, steady, dogged,
relentless, and still in grim silence.

In the greater darkness the mounds seemed now to be somewhat smaller
than before, although--for the night was closing--they looked bigger
in proportion. I was now well ahead of my pursuers, so I made a dart
up the mound in front.

Oh joy of joys! I was close to the edge of this inferno of dustheaps.
Away behind me the red light of Paris was in the sky, and towering up
behind rose the heights of Montmarte--a dim light, with here and there
brilliant points like stars.

Restored to vigour in a moment, I ran over the few remaining mounds of
decreasing size, and found myself on the level land beyond. Even then,
however, the prospect was not inviting. All before me was dark and
dismal, and I had evidently come on one of those dank, low-lying waste
places which are found here and there in the neighbourhood of great
cities. Places of waste and desolation, where the space is required
for the ultimate agglomeration of all that is noxious, and the ground
is so poor as to create no desire of occupancy even in the lowest
squatter. With eyes accustomed to the gloom of the evening, and away
now from the shadows of those dreadful dustheaps, I could see much
more easily than I could a little while ago. It might have been, of
course, that the glare in the sky of the lights of Paris, though the
city was some miles away, was reflected here. Howsoever it was, I saw
well enough to take bearings for certainly some little distance around
me.

In front was a bleak, flat waste that seemed almost dead level, with
here and there the dark shimmering of stagnant pools. Seemingly far
off on the right, amid a small cluster of scattered lights, rose a
dark mass of Fort Montrouge, and away to the left in the dim distance,
pointed with stray gleams from cottage windows, the lights in the sky
showed the locality of Bicêtre. A moment's thought decided me to take
to the right and try to reach Montrouge. There at least would be some
sort of safety, and I might possibly long before come on some of the
cross roads which I knew. Somewhere, not far off, must lie the
strategic road made to connect the outlying chain of forts circling
the city.

Then I looked back. Coming over the mounds, and outlined black against
the glare of the Parisian horizon, I saw several moving figures, and
still a way to the right several more deploying out between me and my
destination. They evidently meant to cut me off in this direction, and
so my choice became constricted; it lay now between going straight
ahead or turning to the left. Stooping to the ground, so as to get the
advantage of the horizon as a line of sight, I looked carefully in
this direction, but could detect no sign of my enemies. I argued that
as they had not guarded or were not trying to guard that point, there
was evidently danger to me there already. So I made up my mind to go
straight on before me.

It was not an inviting prospect, and as I went on the reality grew
worse. The ground became soft and oozy, and now and again gave way
beneath me in a sickening kind of way. I seemed somehow to be going
down, for I saw round me places seemingly more elevated than where I
was, and this in a place which from a little way back seemed dead
level. I looked around, but could see none of my pursuers. This was
strange, for all along these birds of the night had followed me
through the darkness as well as though it was broad daylight. How I
blamed myself for coming out in my light-coloured tourist suit of
tweed. The silence, and my not being able to see my enemies, whilst I
felt that they were watching me, grew appalling, and in the hope of
some one not of this ghastly crew hearing me I raised my voice and
shouted several times. There was not the slightest response; not even
an echo rewarded my efforts. For a while I stood stock still and kept
my eyes in one direction. On one of the rising places around me I saw
something dark move along, then another, and another. This was to my
left, and seemingly moving to head me off.

I thought that again I might with my skill as a runner elude my
enemies at this game, and so with all my speed darted forward.

Splash!

My feet had given way in a mass of slimy rubbish, and I had fallen
headlong into a reeking, stagnant pool. The water and the mud in which
my arms sank up to the elbows was filthy and nauseous beyond
description, and in the suddenness of my fall I had actually swallowed
some of the filthy stuff, which nearly choked me, and made me gasp
for breath. Never shall I forget the moments during which I stood
trying to recover myself almost fainting from the foetid odour of the
filthy pool, whose white mist rose ghostlike around. Worst of all,
with the acute despair of the hunted animal when he sees the pursuing
pack closing on him, I saw before my eyes whilst I stood helpless the
dark forms of my pursuers moving swiftly to surround me.

It is curious how our minds work on odd matters even when the energies
of thought are seemingly concentrated on some terrible and pressing
need. I was in momentary peril of my life: my safety depended on my
action, and my choice of alternatives coming now with almost every
step I took, and yet I could not but think of the strange dogged
persistency of these old men. Their silent resolution, their
steadfast, grim, persistency even in such a cause commanded, as well
as fear, even a measure of respect. What must they have been in the
vigour of their youth. I could understand now that whirlwind rush on
the bridge of Arcola, that scornful exclamation of the Old Guard at
Waterloo! Unconscious cerebration has its own pleasures, even at such
moments; but fortunately it does not in any way clash with the thought
from which action springs.

I realised at a glance that so far I was defeated in my object, my
enemies as yet had won. They had succeeded in surrounding me on three
sides, and were bent on driving me off to the left-hand, where there
was already some danger for me, for they had left no guard. I accepted
the alternative--it was a case of Hobson's choice and run. I had to
keep the lower ground, for my pursuers were on the higher places.
However, though the ooze and broken ground impeded me my youth and
training made me able to hold my ground, and by keeping a diagonal
line I not only kept them from gaining on me but even began to
distance them. This gave me new heart and strength, and by this time
habitual training was beginning to tell and my second wind had come.
Before me the ground rose slightly. I rushed up the slope and found
before me a waste of watery slime, with a low dyke or bank looking
black and grim beyond. I felt that if I could but reach that dyke in
safety I could there, with solid ground under my feet and some kind of
path to guide me, find with comparative ease a way out of my troubles.
After a glance right and left and seeing no one near, I kept my eyes
for a few minutes to their rightful work of aiding my feet whilst I
crossed the swamp. It was rough, hard work, but there was little
danger, merely toil; and a short time took me to the dyke. I rushed up
the slope exulting; but here again I met a new shock. On either side
of me rose a number of crouching figures. From right and left they
rushed at me. Each body held a rope.

The cordon was nearly complete. I could pass on neither side, and the
end was near.

There was only one chance, and I took it. I hurled myself across the
dyke, and escaping out of the very clutches of my foes threw myself
into the stream.

At any other time I should have thought that water foul and filthy,
but now it was as welcome as the most crystal stream to the parched
traveller. It was a highway of safety!

My pursuers rushed after me. Had only one of them held the rope it
would have been all up with me, for he could have entangled me before
I had time to swim a stroke; but the many hands holding it embarrassed
and delayed them, and when the rope struck the water I heard the
splash well behind me. A few minutes' hard swimming took me across
the stream. Refreshed with the immersion and encouraged by the escape,
I climbed the dyke in comparative gaiety of spirits.

From the top I looked back. Through the darkness I saw my assailants
scattering up and down along the dyke. The pursuit was evidently not
ended, and again I had to choose my course. Beyond the dyke where I
stood was a wild, swampy space very similar to that which I had
crossed. I determined to shun such a place, and thought for a moment
whether I would take up or down the dyke. I thought I heard a
sound--the muffled sound of oars, so I listened, and then shouted.

No response; but the sound ceased. My enemies had evidently got a boat
of some kind. As they were on the up side of me I took the down path
and began to run. As I passed to the left of where I had entered the
water I heard several splashes, soft and stealthy, like the sound a
rat makes as he plunges into the stream, but vastly greater; and as I
looked I saw the dark sheen of the water broken by the ripples of
several advancing heads. Some of my enemies were swimming the stream
also.

And now behind me, up the stream, the silence was broken by the quick
rattle and creak of oars; my enemies were in hot pursuit. I put my
best leg foremost and ran on. After a break of a couple of minutes I
looked back, and by a gleam of light through the ragged clouds I saw
several dark forms climbing the bank behind me. The wind had now begun
to rise, and the water beside me was ruffled and beginning to break in
tiny waves on the bank. I had to keep my eyes pretty well on the
ground before me, lest I should stumble, for I knew that to stumble
was death. After a few minutes I looked back behind me. On the dyke
were only a few dark figures, but crossing the waste, swampy ground
were many more. What new danger this portended I did not know--could
only guess. Then as I ran it seemed to me that my track kept ever
sloping away to the right. I looked up ahead and saw that the river
was much wider than before, and that the dyke on which I stood fell
quite away, and beyond it was another stream on whose near bank I saw
some of the dark forms now across the marsh. I was on an island of
some kind.

My situation was now indeed terrible, for my enemies had hemmed me in
on every side. Behind came the quickening roll of the oars, as though
my pursuers knew that the end was close. Around me on every side was
desolation; there was not a roof or light, as far as I could see. Far
off to the right rose some dark mass, but what it was I knew not. For
a moment I paused to think what I should do, not for more, for my
pursuers were drawing closer. Then my mind was made up. I slipped down
the bank and took to the water. I struck out straight ahead so as to
gain the current by clearing the backwater of the island, for such I
presume it was, when I had passed into the stream. I waited till a
cloud came driving across the moon and leaving all in darkness. Then I
took off my hat and laid it softly on the water floating with the
stream, and a second after dived to the right and struck out under
water with all my might. I was, I suppose, half a minute under water,
and when I rose came up as softly as I could, and turning, looked
back. There went my light brown hat floating merrily away. Close
behind it came a rickety old boat, driven furiously by a pair of oars.
The moon was still partly obscured by the drifting clouds, but in the
partial light I could see a man in the bows holding aloft ready to
strike what appeared to me to be that same dreadful pole-axe which I
had before escaped. As I looked the boat drew closer, closer, and the
man struck savagely. The hat disappeared. The man fell forward, almost
out of the boat. His comrades dragged him in but without the axe, and
then as I turned with all my energies bent on reaching the further
bank, I heard the fierce whirr of the muttered 'Sacre!' which marked
the anger of my baffled pursuers.

That was the first sound I had heard from human lips during all this
dreadful chase, and full as it was of menace and danger to me it was a
welcome sound for it broke that awful silence which shrouded and
appalled me. It was as though an overt sign that my opponents were men
and not ghosts, and that with them I had, at least; the chance of a
man, though but one against many.

But now that the spell of silence was broken the sounds came thick and
fast. From boat to shore and back from shore to boat came quick
question and answer, all in the fiercest whispers. I looked back--a
fatal thing to do--for in the instant someone caught sight of my face,
which showed white on the dark water, and shouted. Hands pointed to
me, and in a moment or two the boat was under weigh, and following
hard after me. I had but a little way to go, but quicker and quicker
came the boat after me. A few more strokes and I would be on the
shore, but I felt the oncoming of the boat, and expected each second
to feel the crash of an oar or other weapon on my head. Had I not seen
that dreadful axe disappear in the water I do not think that I could
have won the shore. I heard the muttered curses of those not rowing
and the laboured breath of the rowers. With one supreme effort for
life or liberty I touched the bank and sprang up it. There was not a
single second to spare, for hard behind me the boat grounded and
several dark forms sprang after me. I gained the top of the dyke, and
keeping to the left ran on again. The boat put off and followed down
the stream. Seeing this I feared danger in this direction, and quickly
turning, ran down the dyke on the other side, and after passing a
short stretch of marshy ground gained a wild, open flat country and
sped on.

Still behind me came on my relentless pursuers. Far away, below me, I
saw the same dark mass as before, but now grown closer and greater. My
heart gave a great thrill of delight, for I knew that it must be the
fortress of Bicêtre, and with new courage I ran on. I had heard that
between each and all of the protecting forts of Paris there are
strategic ways, deep sunk roads where soldiers marching should be
sheltered from an enemy. I knew that if I could gain this road I would
be safe, but in the darkness I could not see any sign of it, so, in
blind hope of striking it, I ran on.

Presently I came to the edge of a deep cut, and found that down below
me ran a road guarded on each side by a ditch of water fenced on
either side by a straight, high wall.

Getting fainter and dizzier, I ran on; the ground got more
broken--more and more still, till I staggered and fell, and rose
again, and ran on in the blind anguish of the hunted. Again the
thought of Alice nerved me. I would not be lost and wreck her life: I
would fight and struggle for life to the bitter end. With a great
effort I caught the top of the wall. As, scrambling like a catamount,
I drew myself up, I actually felt a hand touch the sole of my foot. I
was now on a sort of causeway, and before me I saw a dim light. Blind
and dizzy, I ran on, staggered, and fell, rising, covered with dust
and blood.

'Halt la!'

The words sounded like a voice from heaven. A blaze of light seemed to
enwrap me, and I shouted with joy.

'Qui va la?' The rattle of musketry, the flash of steel before my
eyes. Instinctively I stopped, though close behind me came a rush of
my pursuers.

Another word or two, and out from a gateway poured, as it seemed to
me, a tide of red and blue, as the guard turned out. All around seemed
blazing with light, and the flash of steel, the clink and rattle of
arms, and the loud, harsh voices of command. As I fell forward,
utterly exhausted, a soldier caught me. I looked back in dreadful
expectation, and saw the mass of dark forms disappearing into the
night. Then I must have fainted. When I recovered my senses I was in
the guard room. They gave me brandy, and after a while I was able to
tell them something of what had passed. Then a commissary of police
appeared, apparently out of the empty air, as is the way of the
Parisian police officer. He listened attentively, and then had a
moment's consultation with the officer in command. Apparently they
were agreed, for they asked me if I were ready now to come with them.

'Where to?' I asked, rising to go.

'Back to the dust heaps. We shall, perhaps, catch them yet!'

'I shall try!' said I.

He eyed me for a moment keenly, and said suddenly:

'Would you like to wait a while or till tomorrow, young Englishman?'
This touched me to the quick, as, perhaps, he intended, and I jumped
to my feet.

'Come now!' I said; 'now! now! An Englishman is always ready for his
duty!'

The commissary was a good fellow, as well as a shrewd one; he slapped
my shoulder kindly. 'Brave garçon!' he said. 'Forgive me, but I knew
what would do you most good. The guard is ready. Come!'

And so, passing right through the guard room, and through a long
vaulted passage, we were out into the night. A few of the men in front
had powerful lanterns. Through courtyards and down a sloping way we
passed out through a low archway to a sunken road, the same that I had
seen in my flight. The order was given to get at the double, and with
a quick, springing stride, half run, half walk, the soldiers went
swiftly along. I felt my strength renewed again--such is the
difference between hunter and hunted. A very short distance took us to
a low-lying pontoon bridge across the stream, and evidently very
little higher up than I had struck it. Some effort had evidently been
made to damage it, for the ropes had all been cut, and one of the
chains had been broken. I heard the officer say to the commissary:

'We are just in time! A few more minutes, and they would have
destroyed the bridge. Forward, quicker still!' and on we went. Again
we reached a pontoon on the winding stream; as we came up we heard the
hollow boom of the metal drums as the efforts to destroy the bridge
was again renewed. A word of command was given, and several men raised
their rifles.

'Fire!' A volley rang out. There was a muffled cry, and the dark forms
dispersed. But the evil was done, and we saw the far end of the
pontoon swing into the stream. This was a serious delay, and it was
nearly an hour before we had renewed ropes and restored the bridge
sufficiently to allow us to cross.

We renewed the chase. Quicker, quicker we went towards the dust
heaps.

After a time we came to a place that I knew. There were the remains of
a fire--a few smouldering wood ashes still cast a red glow, but the
bulk of the ashes were cold. I knew the site of the hut and the hill
behind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes
of the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence. The commissary
spoke a word to the officer, and he cried:

'Halt!'

The soldiers were ordered to spread around and watch, and then we
commenced to examine the ruins. The commissary himself began to lift
away the charred boards and rubbish. These the soldiers took and piled
together. Presently he started back, then bent down and rising
beckoned me.

'See!' he said.

It was a gruesome sight. There lay a skeleton face downwards, a woman
by the lines--an old woman by the coarse fibre of the bone. Between
the ribs rose a long spike-like dagger made from a butcher's
sharpening knife, its keen point buried in the spine.

'You will observe,' said the commissary to the officer and to me as he
took out his note book, 'that the woman must have fallen on her
dagger. The rats are many here--see their eyes glistening among that
heap of bones--and you will also notice'--I shuddered as he placed his
hand on the skeleton--'that but little time was lost by them, for the
bones are scarcely cold!'

There was no other sign of any one near, living or dead; and so
deploying again into line the soldiers passed on. Presently we came to
the hut made of the old wardrobe. We approached. In five of the six
compartments was an old man sleeping--sleeping so soundly that even
the glare of the lanterns did not wake them. Old and grim and grizzled
they looked, with their gaunt, wrinkled, bronzed faces and their white
moustaches.

The officer called out harshly and loudly a word of command, and in an
instant each one of them was on his feet before us and standing at
'attention!'

'What do you here?'

'We sleep,' was the answer.

'Where are the other chiffoniers?' asked the commissary.

'Gone to work.'

'And you?'

'We are on guard!'

'Peste!' laughed the officer grimly, as he looked at the old men one
after the other in the face and added with cool deliberate cruelty:
'Asleep on duty! Is this the manner of the Old Guard? No wonder, then,
a Waterloo!'

By the gleam of the lantern I saw the grim old faces grow deadly pale,
and almost shuddered at the look in the eyes of the old men as the
laugh of the soldiers echoed the grim pleasantry of the officer.

I felt in that moment that I was in some measure avenged.

For a moment they looked as if they would throw themselves on the
taunter, but years of their life had schooled them and they remained
still.

'You are but five,' said the commissary; 'where is the sixth?' The
answer came with a grim chuckle.

'He is there!' and the speaker pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe.
'He died last night. You won't find much of him. The burial of the
rats is quick!'

The commissary stooped and looked in. Then he turned to the officer
and said calmly:

'We may as well go back. No trace here now; nothing to prove that man
was the one wounded by your soldiers' bullets! Probably they murdered
him to cover up the trace. See!' again he stooped and placed his hands
on the skeleton. 'The rats work quickly and they are many. These bones
are warm!'

I shuddered, and so did many more of those around me.

'Form!' said the officer, and so in marching order, with the lanterns
swinging in front and the manacled veterans in the midst, with steady
tramp we took ourselves out of the dustheaps and turned backward to
the fortress of Bicêtre.

       *       *       *       *       *

My year of probation has long since ended, and Alice is my wife. But
when I look back upon that trying twelvemonth one of the most vivid
incidents that memory recalls is that associated with my visit to the
City of Dust.



A Dream of Red Hands


The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simple
descriptive statement, 'He's a down-in-the-mouth chap': but I found
that it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-workmen.
There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an absence of
positive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, which
marked pretty accurately the man's place in public esteem. Still,
there was some dissimilarity between this and his appearance which
unconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as I saw more of the
place and the workmen, I came to have a special interest in him. He
was, I found, for ever doing kindnesses, not involving money expenses
beyond his humble means, but in the manifold ways of forethought and
forbearance and self-repression which are of the truer charities of
life. Women and children trusted him implicitly, though, strangely
enough, he rather shunned them, except when anyone was sick, and then
he made his appearance to help if he could, timidly and awkwardly. He
led a very solitary life, keeping house by himself in a tiny cottage,
or rather hut, of one room, far on the edge of the moorland. His
existence seemed so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, and
for the purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting up
with a child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend him
books. He gladly accepted, and as we parted in the grey of the dawn I
felt that something of mutual confidence had been established between
us.

The books were always most carefully and punctually returned, and in
time Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice as I
crossed the moorland on Sundays I looked in on him; but on such
occasions he was shy and ill at ease so that I felt diffident about
calling to see him. He would never under any circumstances come into
my own lodgings.

One Sunday afternoon, I was coming back from a long walk beyond the
moor, and as I passed Settle's cottage stopped at the door to say 'How
do you do?' to him. As the door was shut, I thought that he was out,
and merely knocked for form's sake, or through habit, not expecting to
get any answer. To my surprise, I heard a feeble voice from within,
though what was said I could not hear. I entered at once, and found
Jacob lying half-dressed upon his bed. He was as pale as death, and
the sweat was simply rolling off his face. His hands were
unconsciously gripping the bedclothes as a drowning man holds on to
whatever he may grasp. As I came in he half arose, with a wild, hunted
look in his eyes, which were wide open and staring, as though
something of horror had come before him; but when he recognised me he
sank back on the couch with a smothered sob of relief and closed his
eyes. I stood by him for a while, quite a minute or two, while he
gasped. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such a
despairing, woeful expression that, as I am a living man, I would have
rather seen that frozen look of horror. I sat down beside him and
asked after his health. For a while he would not answer me except to
say that he was not ill; but then, after scrutinising me closely, he
half arose on his elbow and said:

'I thank you kindly, sir, but I'm simply telling you the truth. I am
not ill, as men call it, though God knows whether there be not worse
sicknesses than doctors know of. I'll tell you, as you are so kind,
but I trust that you won't even mention such a thing to a living soul,
for it might work me more and greater woe. I am suffering from a bad
dream.'

'A bad dream!' I said, hoping to cheer him; 'but dreams pass away with
the light--even with waking.' There I stopped, for before he spoke I
saw the answer in his desolate look round the little place.

'No! no! that's all well for people that live in comfort and with
those they love around them. It is a thousand times worse for those
who live alone and have to do so. What cheer is there for me, waking
here in the silence of the night, with the wide moor around me full of
voices and full of faces that make my waking a worse dream than my
sleep? Ah, young sir, you have no past that can send its legions to
people the darkness and the empty space, and I pray the good God that
you may never have!' As he spoke, there was such an almost
irresistible gravity of conviction in his manner that I abandoned my
remonstrance about his solitary life. I felt that I was in the
presence of some secret influence which I could not fathom. To my
relief, for I knew not what to say, he went on:

'Two nights past have I dreamed it. It was hard enough the first
night, but I came through it. Last night the expectation was in itself
almost worse than the dream--until the dream came, and then it swept
away every remembrance of lesser pain. I stayed awake till just
before the dawn, and then it came again, and ever since I have been in
such an agony as I am sure the dying feel, and with it all the dread
of tonight.' Before he had got to the end of the sentence my mind was
made up, and I felt that I could speak to him more cheerfully.

'Try and get to sleep early tonight--in fact, before the evening has
passed away. The sleep will refresh you, and I promise you there will
not be any bad dreams after tonight.' He shook his head hopelessly, so
I sat a little longer and then left him.

When I got home I made my arrangements for the night, for I had made
up my mind to share Jacob Settle's lonely vigil in his cottage on the
moor. I judged that if he got to sleep before sunset he would wake
well before midnight, and so, just as the bells of the city were
striking eleven, I stood opposite his door armed with a bag, in which
were my supper, an extra large flask, a couple of candles, and a book.
The moonlight was bright, and flooded the whole moor, till it was
almost as light as day; but ever and anon black clouds drove across
the sky, and made a darkness which by comparison seemed almost
tangible. I opened the door softly, and entered without waking Jacob,
who lay asleep with his white face upward. He was still, and again
bathed in sweat. I tried to imagine what visions were passing before
those closed eyes which could bring with them the misery and woe which
were stamped on the face, but fancy failed me, and I waited for the
awakening. It came suddenly, and in a fashion which touched me to the
quick, for the hollow groan that broke from the man's white lips as he
half arose and sank back was manifestly the realisation or completion
of some train of thought which had gone before.

'If this be dreaming,' said I to myself, 'then it must be based on
some very terrible reality. What can have been that unhappy fact that
he spoke of?'

While I thus spoke, he realised that I was with him. It struck me as
strange that he had no period of that doubt as to whether dream or
reality surrounded him which commonly marks an expected environment of
waking men. With a positive cry of joy, he seized my hand and held it
in his two wet, trembling hands, as a frightened child clings on to
someone whom it loves. I tried to soothe him:

'There, there! it is all right. I have come to stay with you tonight,
and together we will try to fight this evil dream.' He let go my hand
suddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his eyes with his
hands.

'Fight it?--the evil dream! Ah! no, sir, no! No mortal power can fight
that dream, for it comes from God--and is burned in here;' and he beat
upon his forehead. Then he went on:

'It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its power to
torture me every time it comes.'

'What is the dream?' I asked, thinking that the speaking of it might
give him some relief, but he shrank away from me, and after a long
pause said:

'No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again.'

There was manifestly something to conceal from me--something that lay
behind the dream, so I answered:

'All right. I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it should come
again, you will tell me, will you not? I ask, not out of curiosity,
but because I think it may relieve you to speak.' He answered with
what I thought was almost an undue amount of solemnity:

'If it comes again, I shall tell you all.'

Then I tried to get his mind away from the subject to more mundane
things, so I produced supper, and made him share it with me, including
the contents of the flask. After a little he braced up, and when I lit
my cigar, having given him another, we smoked a full hour, and talked
of many things. Little by little the comfort of his body stole over
his mind, and I could see sleep laying her gentle hands on his
eyelids. He felt it, too, and told me that now he felt all right, and
I might safely leave him; but I told him that, right or wrong, I was
going to see in the daylight. So I lit my other candle, and began to
read as he fell asleep.

By degrees I got interested in my book, so interested that presently I
was startled by its dropping out of my hands. I looked and saw that
Jacob was still asleep, and I was rejoiced to see that there was on
his face a look of unwonted happiness, while his lips seemed to move
with unspoken words. Then I turned to my work again, and again woke,
but this time to feel chilled to my very marrow by hearing the voice
from the bed beside me:

'Not with those red hands! Never! never!' On looking at him, I found
that he was still asleep. He woke, however, in an instant, and did not
seem surprised to see me; there was again that strange apathy as to
his surroundings. Then I said:

'Settle, tell me your dream. You may speak freely, for I shall hold
your confidence sacred. While we both live I shall never mention what
you may choose to tell me.'

He replied:

'I said I would; but I had better tell you first what goes before the
dream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster when I was a very
young man; it was only a parish school in a little village in the
West Country. No need to mention any names. Better not. I was engaged
to be married to a young girl whom I loved and almost reverenced. It
was the old story. While we were waiting for the time when we could
afford to set up house together, another man came along. He was nearly
as young as I was, and handsome, and a gentleman, with all a
gentleman's attractive ways for a woman of our class. He would go
fishing, and she would meet him while I was at my work in school. I
reasoned with her and implored her to give him up. I offered to get
married at once and go away and begin the world in a strange country;
but she would not listen to anything I could say, and I could see that
she was infatuated with him. Then I took it on myself to meet the man
and ask him to deal well with the girl, for I thought he might mean
honestly by her, so that there might be no talk or chance of talk on
the part of others. I went where I should meet him with none by, and
we met!' Here Jacob Settle had to pause, for something seemed to rise
in his throat, and he almost gasped for breath. Then he went on:

'Sir, as God is above us, there was no selfish thought in my heart
that day, I loved my pretty Mabel too well to be content with a part
of her love, and I had thought of my own unhappiness too often not to
have come to realise that, whatever might come to her, my hope was
gone. He was insolent to me--you, sir, who are a gentleman, cannot
know, perhaps, how galling can be the insolence of one who is above
you in station--but I bore with that. I implored him to deal well with
the girl, for what might be only a pastime of an idle hour with him
might be the breaking of her heart. For I never had a thought of her
truth, or that the worst of harm could come to her--it was only the
unhappiness to her heart I feared. But when I asked him when he
intended to marry her his laughter galled me so that I lost my temper
and told him that I would not stand by and see her life made unhappy.
Then he grew angry too, and in his anger said such cruel things of her
that then and there I swore he should not live to do her harm. God
knows how it came about, for in such moments of passion it is hard to
remember the steps from a word to a blow, but I found myself standing
over his dead body, with my hands crimson with the blood that welled
from his torn throat. We were alone and he was a stranger, with none
of his kin to seek for him and murder does not always out--not all at
once. His bones may be whitening still, for all I know, in the pool of
the river where I left him. No one suspected his absence, or why it
was, except my poor Mabel, and she dared not speak. But it was all in
vain, for when I came back again after an absence of months--for I
could not live in the place--I learned that her shame had come and
that she had died in it. Hitherto I had been borne up by the thought
that my ill deed had saved her future, but now, when I learned that I
had been too late, and that my poor love was smirched with that man's
sin, I fled away with the sense of my useless guilt upon me more
heavily than I could bear. Ah! sir, you that have not done such a sin
don't know what it is to carry it with you. You may think that custom
makes it easy to you, but it is not so. It grows and grows with every
hour, till it becomes intolerable, and with it growing, too, the
feeling that you must for ever stand outside Heaven. You don't know
what that means, and I pray God that you never may. Ordinary men, to
whom all things are possible, don't often, if ever, think of Heaven.
It is a name, and nothing more, and they are content to wait and let
things be, but to those who are doomed to be shut out for ever you
cannot think what it means, you cannot guess or measure the terrible
endless longing to see the gates opened, and to be able to join the
white figures within.

'And this brings me to my dream. It seemed that the portal was before
me, with great gates of massive steel with bars of the thickness of a
mast, rising to the very clouds, and so close that between them was
just a glimpse of a crystal grotto, on whose shining walls were
figured many white-clad forms with faces radiant with joy. When I
stood before the gate my heart and my soul were so full of rapture and
longing that I forgot. And there stood at the gate two mighty angels
with sweeping wings, and, oh! so stern of countenance. They held each
in one hand a flaming sword, and in the other the latchet, which moved
to and fro at their lightest touch. Nearer were figures all draped in
black, with heads covered so that only the eyes were seen, and they
handed to each who came white garments such as the angels wear. A low
murmur came that told that all should put on their own robes, and
without soil, or the angels would not pass them in, but would smite
them down with the flaming swords. I was eager to don my own garment,
and hurriedly threw it over me and stepped swiftly to the gate; but it
moved not, and the angels, loosing the latchet, pointed to my dress, I
looked down, and was aghast, for the whole robe was smeared with
blood. My hands were red; they glittered with the blood that dripped
from them as on that day by the river bank. And then the angels raised
their flaming swords to smite me down, and the horror was complete--I
awoke. Again, and again, and again, that awful dream comes to me. I
never learn from the experience, I never remember, but at the
beginning the hope is ever there to make the end more appalling; and I
know that the dream does not come out of the common darkness where the
dreams abide, but that it is sent from God as a punishment! Never,
never shall I be able to pass the gate, for the soil on the angel
garments must ever come from these bloody hands!'

I listened as in a spell as Jacob Settle spoke. There was something so
far away in the tone of his voice--something so dreamy and mystic in
the eyes that looked as if through me at some spirit beyond--something
so lofty in his very diction and in such marked contrast to his
workworn clothes and his poor surroundings that I wondered if the
whole thing were not a dream.

We were both silent for a long time. I kept looking at the man before
me in growing wonderment. Now that his confession had been made, his
soul, which had been crushed to the very earth, seemed to leap back
again to uprightness with some resilient force. I suppose I ought to
have been horrified with his story, but, strange to say, I was not. It
certainly is not pleasant to be made the recipient of the confidence
of a murderer, but this poor fellow seemed to have had, not only so
much provocation, but so much self-denying purpose in his deed of
blood that I did not feel called upon to pass judgment upon him. My
purpose was to comfort, so I spoke out with what calmness I could, for
my heart was beating fast and heavily:

'You need not despair, Jacob Settle. God is very good, and His mercy
is great. Live on and work on in the hope that some day you may feel
that you have atoned for the past.' Here I paused, for I could see
that deep, natural sleep this time, was creeping upon him. 'Go to
sleep,' I said; 'I shall watch with you here and we shall have no more
evil dreams tonight.'

He made an effort to pull himself together, and answered:

'I don't know how to thank you for your goodness to me this night, but
I think you had best leave me now. I'll try and sleep this out; I feel
a weight off my mind since I have told you all. If there's anything of
the man left in me, I must try and fight out life alone.'

'I'll go tonight, as you wish it,' I said; 'but take my advice, and do
not live in such a solitary way. Go among men and women; live among
them. Share their joys and sorrows, and it will help you to forget.
This solitude will make you melancholy mad.'

'I will!' he answered, half unconsciously, for sleep was overmastering
him.

I turned to go, and he looked after me. When I had touched the latch I
dropped it, and, coming back to the bed, held out my hand. He grasped
it with both his as he rose to a sitting posture, and I said my
goodnight, trying to cheer him:

'Heart, man, heart! There is work in the world for you to do, Jacob
Settle. You can wear those white robes yet and pass through that gate
of steel!'

Then I left him.

A week after I found his cottage deserted, and on asking at the works
was told that he had 'gone north', no one exactly knew whither.

Two years afterwards, I was staying for a few days with my friend Dr.
Munro in Glasgow. He was a busy man, and could not spare much time for
going about with me, so I spent my days in excursions to the Trossachs
and Loch Katrine and down the Clyde. On the second last evening of my
stay I came back somewhat later than I had arranged, but found that
my host was late too. The maid told me that he had been sent for to
the hospital--a case of accident at the gas-works, and the dinner was
postponed an hour; so telling her I would stroll down to find her
master and walk back with him, I went out. At the hospital I found him
washing his hands preparatory to starting for home. Casually, I asked
him what his case was.

'Oh, the usual thing! A rotten rope and men's lives of no account. Two
men were working in a gasometer, when the rope that held their
scaffolding broke. It must have occurred just before the dinner hour,
for no one noticed their absence till the men had returned. There was
about seven feet of water in the gasometer, so they had a hard fight
for it, poor fellows. However, one of them was alive, just alive, but
we have had a hard job to pull him through. It seems that he owes his
life to his mate, for I have never heard of greater heroism. They swam
together while their strength lasted, but at the end they were so done
up that even the lights above, and the men slung with ropes, coming
down to help them, could not keep them up. But one of them stood on
the bottom and held up his comrade over his head, and those few
breaths made all the difference between life and death. They were a
shocking sight when they were taken out, for that water is like a
purple dye with the gas and the tar. The man upstairs looked as if he
had been washed in blood. Ugh!'

'And the other?'

'Oh, he's worse still. But he must have been a very noble fellow. That
struggle under the water must have been fearful; one can see that by
the way the blood has been drawn from the extremities. It makes the
idea of the _Stigmata_ possible to look at him. Resolution like this
could, you would think, do anything in the world. Ay! it might almost
unbar the gates of Heaven. Look here, old man, it is not a very
pleasant sight, especially just before dinner, but you are a writer,
and this is an odd case. Here is something you would not like to miss,
for in all human probability you will never see anything like it
again.' While he was speaking he had brought me into the mortuary of
the hospital.

On the bier lay a body covered with a white sheet, which was wrapped
close round it.

'Looks like a chrysalis, don't it? I say, Jack, if there be anything
in the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly, well, then the
one that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble specimen and took
all the sunlight on its wings. See here!' He uncovered the face.
Horrible, indeed, it looked, as though stained with blood. But I knew
him at once, Jacob Settle! My friend pulled the winding sheet further
down.

The hands were crossed on the purple breast as they had been
reverently placed by some tender-hearted person. As I saw them my
heart throbbed with a great exultation, for the memory of his
harrowing dream rushed across my mind. There was no stain now on those
poor, brave hands, for they were blanched white as snow.

And somehow as I looked I felt that the evil dream was all over. That
noble soul had won a way through the gate at last. The white robe had
now no stain from the hands that had put it on.



Crooken Sands


Mr Arthur Fernlee Markam, who took what was known as the Red House
above the Mains of Crooken, was a London merchant, and being
essentially a cockney, thought it necessary when he went for the
summer holidays to Scotland to provide an entire rig-out as a Highland
chieftain, as manifested in chromolithographs and on the music-hall
stage. He had once seen in the Empire the Great Prince--'The Bounder
King'--bring down the house by appearing as 'The MacSlogan of that
Ilk,' and singing the celebrated Scotch song, 'There's naething like
haggis to mak a mon dry!' and he had ever since preserved in his mind
a faithful image of the picturesque and warlike appearance which he
presented. Indeed, if the true inwardness of Mr. Markam's mind on the
subject of his selection of Aberdeenshire as a summer resort were
known, it would be found that in the foreground of the holiday
locality which his fancy painted stalked the many hued figure of the
MacSlogan of that Ilk. However, be this as it may, a very kind
fortune--certainly so far as external beauty was concerned--led him to
the choice of Crooken Bay. It is a lovely spot, between Aberdeen and
Peterhead, just under the rock-bound headland whence the long,
dangerous reefs known as The Spurs run out into the North Sea.
Between this and the 'Mains of Crooken'--a village sheltered by the
northern cliffs--lies the deep bay, backed with a multitude of
bent-grown dunes where the rabbits are to be found in thousands. Thus
at either end of the bay is a rocky promontory, and when the dawn or
the sunset falls on the rocks of red syenite the effect is very
lovely. The bay itself is floored with level sand and the tide runs
far out, leaving a smooth waste of hard sand on which are dotted here
and there the stake nets and bag nets of the salmon fishers. At one
end of the bay there is a little group or cluster of rocks whose heads
are raised something above high water, except when in rough weather
the waves come over them green. At low tide they are exposed down to
sand level; and here is perhaps the only little bit of dangerous sand
on this part of the eastern coast. Between the rocks, which are apart
about some fifty feet, is a small quicksand, which, like the Goodwins,
is dangerous only with the incoming tide. It extends outwards till it
is lost in the sea, and inwards till it fades away in the hard sand of
the upper beach. On the slope of the hill which rises beyond the
dunes, midway between the Spurs and the Port of Crooken, is the Red
House. It rises from the midst of a clump of fir-trees which protect
it on three sides, leaving the whole sea front open. A trim
old-fashioned garden stretches down to the roadway, on crossing which
a grassy path, which can be used for light vehicles, threads a way to
the shore, winding amongst the sand hills.

When the Markam family arrived at the Red House after their thirty-six
hours of pitching on the Aberdeen steamer _Ban Righ_ from Blackwall,
with the subsequent train to Yellon and drive of a dozen miles, they
all agreed that they had never seen a more delightful spot. The
general satisfaction was more marked as at that very time none of the
family were, for several reasons, inclined to find favourable anything
or any place over the Scottish border. Though the family was a large
one, the prosperity of the business allowed them all sorts of personal
luxuries, amongst which was a wide latitude in the way of dress. The
frequency of the Markam girls' new frocks was a source of envy to
their bosom friends and of joy to themselves.

Arthur Fernlee Markam had not taken his family into his confidence
regarding his new costume. He was not quite certain that he should be
free from ridicule, or at least from sarcasm, and as he was sensitive
on the subject, he thought it better to be actually in the suitable
environment before he allowed the full splendour to burst upon them.
He had taken some pains, to insure the completeness of the Highland
costume. For the purpose he had paid many visits to 'The Scotch
All-Wool Tartan Clothing Mart' which had been lately established in
Copthall-court by the Messrs. MacCallum More and Roderick MacDhu. He
had anxious consultations with the head of the firm--MacCallum as he
called himself, resenting any such additions as 'Mr.' or 'Esquire.'
The known stock of buckles, buttons, straps, brooches and ornaments of
all kinds were examined in critical detail; and at last an eagle's
feather of sufficiently magnificent proportions was discovered, and
the equipment was complete. It was only when he saw the finished
costume, with the vivid hues of the tartan seemingly modified into
comparative sobriety by the multitude of silver fittings, the
cairngorm brooches, the philibeg, dirk and sporran that he was fully
and absolutely satisfied with his choice. At first he had thought of
the Royal Stuart dress tartan, but abandoned it on the MacCallum
pointing out that if he should happen to be in the neighbourhood of
Balmoral it might lead to complications. The MacCallum, who, by the
way, spoke with a remarkable cockney accent, suggested other plaids in
turn; but now that the other question of accuracy had been raised, Mr.
Markam foresaw difficulties if he should by chance find himself in the
locality of the clan whose colours he had usurped. The MacCallum at
last undertook to have, at Markam's expense, a special pattern woven
which would not be exactly the same as any existing tartan, though
partaking of the characteristics of many. It was based on the Royal
Stuart, but contained suggestions as to simplicity of pattern from the
Macalister and Ogilvie clans, and as to neutrality of colour from the
clans of Buchanan, Macbeth, Chief of Macintosh and Macleod. When the
specimen had been shown to Markam he had feared somewhat lest it
should strike the eye of his domestic circle as gaudy; but as Roderick
MacDhu fell into perfect ecstasies over its beauty he did not make any
objection to the completion of the piece. He thought, and wisely, that
if a genuine Scotchman like MacDhu liked it, it must be
right--especially as the junior partner was a man very much of his own
build and appearance. When the MacCallum was receiving his
cheque--which, by the way, was a pretty stiff one--he remarked:

'I've taken the liberty of having some more of the stuff woven in case
you or any of your friends should want it.' Markam was gratified, and
told him that he should be only too happy if the beautiful stuff which
they had originated between them should become a favourite, as he had
no doubt it would in time. He might make and sell as much as he would.

Markam tried the dress on in his office one evening after the clerks
had all gone home. He was pleased, though a little frightened, at the
result. The MacCallum had done his work thoroughly, and there was
nothing omitted that could add to the martial dignity of the wearer.

'I shall not, of course, take the claymore and the pistols with me on
ordinary occasions,' said Markam to himself as he began to undress. He
determined that he would wear the dress for the first time on landing
in Scotland, and accordingly on the morning when the _Ban Righ_ was
hanging off the Girdle Ness lighthouse, waiting for the tide to enter
the port of Aberdeen, he emerged from his cabin in all the gaudy
splendour of his new costume. The first comment he heard was from one
of his own sons, who did not recognise him at first.

'Here's a guy! Great Scott! It's the governor!' And the boy fled
forthwith and tried to bury his laughter under a cushion in the
saloon. Markam was a good sailor and had not suffered from the
pitching of the boat, so that his naturally rubicund face was even
more rosy by the conscious blush which suffused his cheeks when he had
found himself at once the cynosure of all eyes. He could have wished
that he had not been so bold for he knew from the cold that there was
a big bare spot under one side of his jauntily worn Glengarry cap.
However, he faced the group of strangers boldly. He was not,
outwardly, upset even when some of the comments reached his ears.

'He's off his bloomin' chump,' said a cockney in a suit of exaggerated
plaid.

'There's flies on him,' said a tall thin Yankee, pale with
sea-sickness, who was on his way to take up his residence for a time
as close as he could get to the gates of Balmoral.

'Happy thought! Let us fill our mulls; now's the chance!' said a
young Oxford man on his way home to Inverness. But presently Mr.
Markam heard the voice of his eldest daughter.

'Where is he? Where is he?' and she came tearing along the deck with
her hat blowing behind her. Her face showed signs of agitation, for
her mother had just been telling her of her father's condition; but
when she saw him she instantly burst into laughter so violent that it
ended in a fit of hysterics. Something of the same kind happened to
each of the other children. When they had all had their turn Mr.
Markam went to his cabin and sent his wife's maid to tell each member
of the family that he wanted to see them at once. They all made their
appearance, suppressing their feelings as well as they could. He said
to them very quietly:

'My dears, don't I provide you all with ample allowances?'

'Yes, father!' they all answered gravely, 'no one could be more
generous!'

'Don't I let you dress as you please?'

'Yes, father!'--this a little sheepishly.

'Then, my dears, don't you think it would be nicer and kinder of you
not to try and make me feel uncomfortable, even if I do assume a dress
which is ridiculous in your eyes, though quite common enough in the
country where we are about to sojourn?' There was no answer except
that which appeared in their hanging heads. He was a good father and
they all knew it. He was quite satisfied and went on:

'There, now, run away and enjoy yourselves! We shan't have another
word about it.' Then he went on deck again and stood bravely the fire
of ridicule which he recognised around him, though nothing more was
said within his hearing.

The astonishment and the amusement which his get-up occasioned on the
_Ban Righ_ was, however, nothing to that which it created in Aberdeen.
The boys and loafers, and women with babies, who waited at the landing
shed, followed _en masse_ as the Markam party took their way to the
railway station; even the porters with their old-fashioned knots and
their new-fashioned barrows, who await the traveller at the foot of
the gang-plank, followed in wondering delight. Fortunately the
Peterhead train was just about to start, so that the martyrdom was not
unnecessarily prolonged. In the carriage the glorious Highland costume
was unseen, and as there were but few persons at the station at
Yellon, all went well there. When, however, the carriage drew near the
Mains of Crooken and the fisher folk had run to their doors to see who
it was that was passing, the excitement exceeded all bounds. The
children with one impulse waved their bonnets and ran shouting behind
the carriage; the men forsook their nets and their baiting and
followed; the women clutched their babies, and followed also. The
horses were tired after their long journey to Yellon and back, and the
hill was steep, so that there was ample time for the crowd to gather
and even to pass on ahead.

Mrs. Markam and the elder girls would have liked to make some protest
or to do something to relieve their feelings of chagrin at the
ridicule which they saw on all faces, but there was a look of fixed
determination on the face of the seeming Highlander which awed them a
little, and they were silent. It might have been that the eagle's
feather, even when arising above the bald head, the cairngorm brooch
even on the fat shoulder, and the claymore, dirk and pistols, even
when belted round the extensive paunch and protruding from the
stocking on the sturdy calf, fulfilled their existence as symbols of
martial and terrifying import! When the party arrived at the gate of
the Red House there awaited them a crowd of Crooken inhabitants,
hatless and respectfully silent; the remainder of the population was
painfully toiling up the hill. The silence was broken by only one
sound, that of a man with a deep voice.

'Man! but he's forgotten the pipes!'

The servants had arrived some days before, and all things were in
readiness. In the glow consequent on a good lunch after a hard journey
all the disagreeables of travel and all the chagrin consequent on the
adoption of the obnoxious costume were forgotten.

That afternoon Markam, still clad in full array, walked through the
Mains of Crooken. He was all alone, for, strange to say, his wife and
both daughters had sick headaches, and were, as he was told, lying
down to rest after the fatigue of the journey. His eldest son, who
claimed to be a young man, had gone out by himself to explore the
surroundings of the place, and one of the boys could not be found. The
other boy, on being told that his father had sent for him to come for
a walk, had managed--by accident, of course--to fall into the water
butt, and had to be dried and rigged out afresh. His clothes not
having been as yet unpacked this was of course impossible without
delay.

Mr. Markam was not quite satisfied with his walk. He could not meet
any of his neighbours. It was not that there were not enough people
about, for every house and cottage seemed to be full; but the people
when in the open were either in their doorways some distance behind
him, or on the roadway a long distance in front. As he passed he
could see the tops of heads and the whites of eyes in the windows or
round the corners of doors. The only interview which he had was
anything but a pleasant one. This was with an odd sort of old man who
was hardly ever heard to speak except to join in the 'Amens' in the
meeting-house. His sole occupation seemed to be to wait at the window
of the post-office from eight o'clock in the morning till the arrival
of the mail at one, when he carried the letter-bag to a neighbouring
baronial castle. The remainder of his day was spent on a seat in a
draughty part of the port, where the offal of the fish, the refuse of
the bait, and the house rubbish was thrown, and where the ducks were
accustomed to hold high revel.

When Saft Tammie beheld him coming he raised his eyes, which were
generally fixed on the nothing which lay on the roadway opposite his
seat, and, seeming dazzled as if by a burst of sunshine, rubbed them
and shaded them with his hand. Then he started up and raised his hand
aloft in a denunciatory manner as he spoke:--

'"Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. All is vanity." Mon, be
warned in time! "Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not,
neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these." Mon! Mon! Thy vanity is as the quicksand which
swallows up all which comes within its spell. Beware vanity! Beware
the quicksand, which yawneth for thee, and which will swallow thee up!
See thyself! Learn thine own vanity! Meet thyself face to face, and
then in that moment thou shalt learn the fatal force of thy vanity.
Learn it, know it, and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee!' Then
without another word he went back to his seat and sat there immovable
and expressionless as before.

Markam could not but feel a little upset by this tirade. Only that it
was spoken by a seeming madman, he would have put it down to some
eccentric exhibition of Scottish humour or impudence; but the gravity
of the message--for it seemed nothing else--made such a reading
impossible. He was, however, determined not to give in to ridicule,
and although he had not yet seen anything in Scotland to remind him
even of a kilt, he determined to wear his Highland dress. When he
returned home, in less than half-an-hour, he found that every member
of the family was, despite the headaches, out taking a walk. He took
the opportunity afforded by their absence of locking himself in his
dressing-room, took off the Highland dress, and, putting on a suit of
flannels, lit a cigar and had a snooze. He was awakened by the noise
of the family coming in, and at once donning his dress made his
appearance in the drawing-room for tea.

He did not go out again that afternoon; but after dinner he put on his
dress again--he had, of course dressed for dinner as usual--and went
by himself for a walk on the sea-shore. He had by this time come to
the conclusion that he would get by degrees accustomed to the Highland
dress before making it his ordinary wear. The moon was up and he
easily followed the path through the sand-hills, and shortly struck
the shore. The tide was out and the beach firm as a rock, so he
strolled southwards to nearly the end of the bay. Here he was
attracted by two isolated rocks some little way out from the edge of
the dunes, so he strolled towards them. When he reached the nearest
one he climbed it, and, sitting there elevated some fifteen or twenty
feet over the waste of sand, enjoyed the lovely, peaceful prospect.
The moon was rising behind the headland of Pennyfold, and its light
was just touching the top of the furthermost rock of the Spurs some
three-quarters of a mile out; the rest of the rocks were in dark
shadow. As the moon rose over the headland, the rocks of the Spurs and
then the beach by degrees became flooded with light.

For a good while Mr. Markam sat and looked at the rising moon and the
growing area of light which followed its rise. Then he turned and
faced eastwards and sat with his chin in his hand looking seawards,
and revelling in the peace and beauty and freedom of the scene. The
roar of London--the darkness and the strife and weariness of London
life--seemed to have passed quite away, and he lived at the moment a
freer and higher life. He looked at the glistening water as it stole
its way over the flat waste of sand, coming closer and closer
insensibly--the tide had turned. Presently he heard a distant shouting
along the beach very far off.

'The fishermen calling to each other,' he said to himself and looked
around. As he did so he got a horrible shock, for though just then a
cloud sailed across the moon he saw, in spite of the sudden darkness
around him, his own image. For an instant, on the top of the opposite
rock he could see the bald back of the head and the Glengarry cap with
the immense eagle's feather. As he staggered back his foot slipped,
and he began to slide down towards the sand between the two rocks. He
took no concern as to failing, for the sand was really only a few feet
below him, and his mind was occupied with the figure or simulacrum of
himself, which had already disappeared. As the easiest way of reaching
_terra firma_ he prepared to jump the remainder of the distance. All
this had taken but a second, but the brain works quickly, and even as
he gathered himself for the spring he saw the sand below him lying so
marbly level shake and shiver in an odd way. A sudden fear overcame
him; his knees failed, and instead of jumping he slid miserably down
the rock, scratching his bare legs as he went. His feet touched the
sand--went through it like water--and he was down below his knees
before he realised that he was in a quicksand. Wildly he grasped at
the rock to keep himself from sinking further, and fortunately there
was a jutting spur or edge which he was able to grasp instinctively.
To this he clung in grim desperation. He tried to shout, but his
breath would not come, till after a great effort his voice rang out.
Again he shouted, and it seemed as if the sound of his own voice gave
him new courage, for he was able to hold on to the rock for a longer
time than he thought possible--though he held on only in blind
desperation. He was, however, beginning to find his grasp weakening,
when, joy of joys! his shout was answered by a rough voice from just
above him.

'God be thankit, I'm nae too late!' and a fisherman with great
thigh-boots came hurriedly climbing over the rock. In an instant he
recognised the gravity of the danger, and with a cheering 'Haud fast,
mon! I'm comin'!' scrambled down till he found a firm foothold. Then
with one strong hand holding the rock above, he leaned down, and
catching Markam's wrist, called out to him, 'Haud to me, mon! Haud to
me wi' ither hond!'

Then he lent his great strength, and with a steady, sturdy pull,
dragged him out of the hungry quicksand and placed him safe upon the
rock. Hardly giving him time to draw breath, he pulled and pushed
him--never letting him go for an instant--over the rock into the firm
sand beyond it, and finally deposited him, still shaking from the
magnitude of his danger, high upon the beach. Then he began to speak:

'Mon! but I was just in time. If I had no laucht at yon foolish lads
and begun to rin at the first you'd a bin sinkin' doon to the bowels
o' the airth be the noo! Wully Beagrie thocht you was a ghaist, and
Tom MacPhail swore ye was only like a goblin on a puddick-steel! "Na!"
said I. "Yon's but the daft Englishman--the loony that had escapit
frae the waxwarks." I was thinkin' that bein' strange and silly--if
not a whole-made feel--ye'd no ken the ways o' the quicksan'! I
shouted till warn ye, and then ran to drag ye aff, if need be. But God
be thankit, be ye fule or only half-daft wi' yer vanity, that I was no
that late!' and he reverently lifted his cap as he spoke.

Mr. Markam was deeply touched and thankful for his escape from a
horrible death; but the sting of the charge of vanity thus made once
more against him came through his humility. He was about to reply
angrily, when suddenly a great awe fell upon him as he remembered the
warning words of the half-crazy letter-carrier: 'Meet thyself face to
face, and repent ere the quicksand shall swallow thee!'

Here, too, he remembered the image of himself that he had seen and the
sudden danger from the deadly quicksand that had followed. He was
silent a full minute, and then said:

'My good fellow, I owe you my life!'

The answer came with reverence from the hardy fisherman, 'Na! Na! Ye
owe that to God; but, as for me, I'm only too glad till be the humble
instrument o' His mercy.'

'But you will let me thank you,' said Mr. Markam, taking both the
great hands of his deliverer in his and holding them tight. 'My heart
is too full as yet, and my nerves are too much shaken to let me say
much; but, believe me, I am very, very grateful!' It was quite evident
that the poor old fellow was deeply touched, for the tears were
running down his cheeks.

The fisherman said, with a rough but true courtesy:

'Ay, sir! thank me and ye will--if it'll do yer poor heart good. An'
I'm thinking that if it were me I'd be thankful too. But, sir, as for
me I need no thanks. I am glad, so I am!'

That Arthur Fernlee Markam was really thankful and grateful was shown
practically later on. Within a week's time there sailed into Port
Crooken the finest fishing smack that had ever been seen in the
harbour of Peterhead. She was fully found with sails and gear of all
kinds, and with nets of the best. Her master and men went away by the
coach, after having left with the salmon-fisher's wife the papers
which made her over to him.

As Mr. Markam and the salmon-fisher walked together along the shore
the former asked his companion not to mention the fact that he had
been in such imminent danger, for that it would only distress his dear
wife and children. He said that he would warn them all of the
quicksand, and for that purpose he, then and there, asked questions
about it till he felt that his information on the subject was
complete. Before they parted he asked his companion if he had happened
to see a second figure, dressed like himself on the other rock as he
had approached to succour him.

'Na! Na!' came the answer, 'there is nae sic another fule in these
parts. Nor has there been since the time o' Jamie Fleeman--him that
was fule to the Laird o' Udny. Why, mon! sic a heathenish dress as ye
have on till ye has nae been seen in these pairts within the memory o'
mon. An' I'm thinkin' that sic a dress never was for sittin' on the
cauld rock, as ye done beyont. Mon! but do ye no fear the rheumatism
or the lumbagy wi' floppin' doon on to the cauld stanes wi' yer bare
flesh? I was thinking that it was daft ye waur when I see ye the
mornin' doon be the port, but it's fule or eediot ye maun be for the
like o' thot!' Mr. Markam did not care to argue the point, and as they
were now close to his own home he asked the salmon-fisher to have a
glass of whisky--which he did--and they parted for the night. He took
good care to warn all his family of the quicksand, telling them that
he had himself been in some danger from it.

All that night he never slept. He heard the hours strike one after the
other; but try how he would he could not get to sleep. Over and over
again he went through the horrible episode of the quicksand, from the
time that Saft Tammie had broken his habitual silence to preach to him
of the sin of vanity and to warn him. The question kept ever arising
in his mind: 'Am I then so vain as to be in the ranks of the foolish?'
and the answer ever came in the words of the crazy prophet: '"Vanity
of vanities! All is vanity." Meet thyself face to face, and repent ere
the quicksand shall swallow thee!' Somehow a feeling of doom began to
shape itself in his mind that he would yet perish in that same
quicksand, for there he had already met himself face to face.

In the grey of the morning he dozed off, but it was evident that he
continued the subject in his dreams, for he was fully awakened by his
wife, who said:

'Do sleep quietly! That blessed Highland suit has got on your brain.
Don't talk in your sleep, if you can help it!' He was somehow
conscious of a glad feeling, as if some terrible weight had been
lifted from him, but he did not know any cause of it. He asked his
wife what he had said in his sleep, and she answered:

'You said it often enough, goodness knows, for one to remember
it--"Not face to face! I saw the eagle plume over the bald head! There
is hope yet! Not face to face!" Go to sleep! Do!' And then he did go
to sleep, for he seemed to realise that the prophecy of the crazy man
had not yet been fulfilled. He had not met himself face to face--as
yet at all events.

He was awakened early by a maid who came to tell him that there was a
fisherman at the door who wanted to see him. He dressed himself as
quickly as he could--for he was not yet expert with the Highland
dress--and hurried down, not wishing to keep the salmon-fisher
waiting. He was surprised and not altogether pleased to find that his
visitor was none other than Saft Tammie, who at once opened fire on
him:

'I maun gang awa' t' the post; but I thocht that I would waste an hour
on ye, and ca' roond just to see if ye waur still that fou wi' vanity
as on the nicht gane by. An I see that ye've no learned the lesson.
Well! the time is comin', sure eneucht! However I have all the time i'
the marnins to my ain sel', so I'll aye look roond jist till see how
ye gang yer ain gait to the quicksan', and then to the de'il! I'm aff
till ma wark the noo!' And he went straightway, leaving Mr. Markam
considerably vexed, for the maids within earshot were vainly trying to
conceal their giggles. He had fairly made up his mind to wear on that
day ordinary clothes, but the visit of Saft Tammie reversed his
decision. He would show them all that he was not a coward, and he
would go on as he had begun--come what might. When he came to
breakfast in full martial panoply the children, one and all, held down
their heads and the backs of their necks became very red indeed. As,
however, none of them laughed--except Titus, the youngest boy, who was
seized with a fit of hysterical choking and was promptly banished from
the room--he could not reprove them, but began to break his egg with a
sternly determined air. It was unfortunate that as his wife was
handing him a cup of tea one of the buttons of his sleeve caught in
the lace of her morning wrapper, with the result that the hot tea was
spilt over his bare knees. Not unnaturally, he made use of a swear
word, whereupon his wife, somewhat nettled, spoke out:

'Well, Arthur, if you will make such an idiot of yourself with that
ridiculous costume what else can you expect? You are not accustomed to
it--and you never will be!' In answer he began an indignant speech
with: 'Madam!' but he got no further, for now that the subject was
broached, Mrs. Markam intended to have her say out. It was not a
pleasant say, and, truth to tell, it was not said in a pleasant
manner. A wife's manner seldom is pleasant when she undertakes to tell
what she considers 'truths' to her husband. The result was that Arthur
Fernlee Markam undertook, then and there, that during his stay in
Scotland he would wear no other costume than the one she abused.
Woman-like his wife had the last word--given in this case with tears:

'Very well, Arthur! Of course you will do as you choose. Make me as
ridiculous as you can, and spoil the poor girls' chances in life.
Young men don't seem to care, as a general rule, for an idiot
father-in-law! But I must warn you that your vanity will some day get
a rude shock--if indeed you are not before then in an asylum or dead!'

It was manifest after a few days that Mr. Markam would have to take
the major part of his outdoor exercise by himself. The girls now and
again took a walk with him, chiefly in the early morning or late at
night, or on a wet day when there would be no one about; they
professed to be willing to go out at all times, but somehow something
always seemed to occur to prevent it. The boys could never be found at
all on such occasions, and as to Mrs. Markam she sternly refused to go
out with him on any consideration so long as he should continue to
make a fool of himself. On the Sunday he dressed himself in his
habitual broadcloth, for he rightly felt that church was not a place
for angry feelings; but on Monday morning he resumed his Highland
garb. By this time he would have given a good deal if he had never
thought of the dress, but his British obstinacy was strong, and he
would not give in. Saft Tammie called at his house every morning, and,
not being able to see him nor to have any message taken to him, used
to call back in the afternoon when the letter-bag had been delivered
and watched for his going out. On such occasions he never failed to
warn him against his vanity in the same words which he had used at the
first. Before many days were over Mr. Markam had come to look upon him
as little short of a scourge.

By the time the week was out the enforced partial solitude, the
constant chagrin, and the never-ending brooding which was thus
engendered, began to make Mr. Markam quite ill. He was too proud to
take any of his family into his confidence since they had in his view
treated him very badly. Then he did not sleep well at night, and when
he did sleep he had constantly bad dreams. Merely to assure himself
that his pluck was not failing him he made it a practice to visit the
quicksand at least once every day, he hardly ever failed to go there
the last thing at night. It was perhaps this habit that wrought the
quicksand with its terrible experience so perpetually into his dreams.
More and more vivid these became, till on waking at times he could
hardly realise that he had not been actually in the flesh to visit the
fatal spot. He sometimes thought that he might have been walking in
his sleep.

One night his dream was so vivid that when he awoke he could not
believe that it had only been a dream. He shut his eyes again and
again, but each time the vision, if it was a vision, or the reality,
if it was a reality, would rise before him. The moon was shining full
and yellow over the quicksand as he approached it; he could see the
expanse of light shaken and disturbed and full of black shadows as the
liquid sand quivered and trembled and wrinkled and eddied as was its
wont between its pauses of marble calm. As he drew close to it another
figure came towards it from the opposite side with equal footsteps. He
saw that it was his own figure, his very self, and in silent terror,
compelled by what force he knew not, he advanced--charmed as the bird
is by the snake, mesmerised or hypnotised--to meet this other self. As
he felt the yielding sand closing over him he awoke in the agony of
death, trembling with fear, and, strange to say, with the silly man's
prophecy seeming to sound in his ears: '"Vanity of vanities! All is
vanity!" See thyself and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee!'

So convinced was he that this was no dream that he arose, early as it
was, and dressing himself without disturbing his wife took his way to
the shore. His heart fell when he came across a series of footsteps on
the sands, which he at once recognised as his own. There was the same
wide heel, the same square toe; he had no doubt now that he had
actually been there, and half horrified, and half in a state of dreamy
stupor, he followed the footsteps, and found them lost in the edge of
the yielding quicksand. This gave him a terrible shock, for there were
no return steps marked on the sand, and he felt that there was some
dread mystery which he could not penetrate, and the penetration of
which would, he feared, undo him.

In this state of affairs he took two wrong courses. Firstly he kept
his trouble to himself, and, as none of his family had any clue to it,
every innocent word or expression which they used supplied fuel to the
consuming fire of his imagination. Secondly he began to read books
professing to bear upon the mysteries of dreaming and of mental
phenomena generally, with the result that every wild imagination of
every crank or half-crazy philosopher became a living germ of unrest
in the fertilising soil of his disordered brain. Thus negatively and
positively all things began to work to a common end. Not the least of
his disturbing causes was Saft Tammie, who had now become at certain
times of the day a fixture at his gate. After a while, being
interested in the previous state of this individual, he made inquiries
regarding his past with the following result.

Saft Tammie was popularly believed to be the son of a laird in one of
the counties round the Firth of Forth. He had been partially educated
for the ministry, but for some cause which no one ever knew threw up
his prospects suddenly, and, going to Peterhead in its days of whaling
prosperity, had there taken service on a whaler. Here off and on he
had remained for some years, getting gradually more and more silent in
his habits, till finally his shipmates protested against so taciturn a
mate, and he had found service amongst the fishing smacks of the
northern fleet. He had worked for many years at the fishing with
always the reputation of being 'a wee bit daft,' till at length he had
gradually settled down at Crooken, where the laird, doubtless knowing
something of his family history, had given him a job which practically
made him a pensioner. The minister who gave the information finished
thus:--

'It is a very strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind
of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are
so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know
not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place
but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some
saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets
uneasy or excited--wakes up, in fact--when death is in the air!'

This did not in any way tend to lessen Mr. Markam's concern, but on
the contrary seemed to impress the prophecy more deeply on his mind.
Of all the books which he had read on his new subject of study none
interested him so much as a German one _Die Döppleganger_, by Dr.
Heinrich von Aschenberg, formerly of Bonn. Here he learned for the
first time of cases where men had led a double existence--each nature
being quite apart from the other--the body being always a reality with
one spirit, and a simulacrum with the other. Needless to say that Mr.
Markam realised this theory as exactly suiting his own case. The
glimpse which he had of his own back the night of his escape from the
quicksand--his own footmarks disappearing into the quicksand with no
return steps visible--the prophecy of Saft Tammie about his meeting
himself and perishing in the quicksand--all lent aid to the conviction
that he was in his own person an instance of the döppleganger. Being
then conscious of a double life he took steps to prove its existence
to his own satisfaction. To this end on one night before going to bed
he wrote his name in chalk on the soles of his shoes. That night he
dreamed of the quicksand, and of his visiting it--dreamed so vividly
that on walking in the grey of the dawn he could not believe that he
had not been there. Arising, without disturbing his wife, he sought
his shoes.

The chalk signatures were undisturbed! He dressed himself and stole
out softly. This time the tide was in, so he crossed the dunes and
struck the shore on the further side of the quicksand. There, oh,
horror of horrors! he saw his own footprints dying into the abyss!

He went home a desperately sad man. It seemed incredible that he, an
elderly commercial man, who had passed a long and uneventful life in
the pursuit of business in the midst of roaring, practical London,
should thus find himself enmeshed in mystery and horror, and that he
should discover that he had two existences. He could not speak of his
trouble even to his own wife, for well he knew that she would at once
require the fullest particulars of that other life--the one which she
did not know; and that she would at the start not only imagine but
charge him with all manner of infidelities on the head of it. And so
his brooding grew deeper and deeper still. One evening--the tide then
going out and the moon being at the full--he was sitting waiting for
dinner when the maid announced that Saft Tammie was making a
disturbance outside because he would not be let in to see him. He was
very indignant, but did not like the maid to think that he had any
fear on the subject, and so told her to bring him in. Tammie entered,
walking more briskly than ever with his head up and a look of vigorous
decision in the eyes that were so generally cast down. As soon as he
entered he said:

'I have come to see ye once again--once again; and there ye sit, still
just like a cockatoo on a pairch. Weel, mon, I forgie ye! Mind ye
that, I forgie ye!' And without a word more he turned and walked out
of the house, leaving the master in speechless indignation.

After dinner he determined to pay another visit to the quicksand--he
would not allow even to himself that he was afraid to go. And so,
about nine o'clock, in full array, he marched to the beach, and
passing over the sands sat on the skirt of the nearer rock. The full
moon was behind him and its light lit up the bay so that its fringe of
foam, the dark outline of the headland, and the stakes of the
salmon-nets were all emphasised. In the brilliant yellow glow the
lights in the windows of Port Crooken and in those of the distant
castle of the laird trembled like stars through the sky. For a long
time he sat and drank in the beauty of the scene, and his soul seemed
to feel a peace that it had not known for many days. All the pettiness
and annoyance and silly fears of the past weeks seemed blotted out,
and a new holy calm took the vacant place. In this sweet and solemn
mood he reviewed his late action calmly, and felt ashamed of himself
for his vanity and for the obstinacy which had followed it. And then
and there he made up his mind that the present would be the last time
he would wear the costume which had estranged him from those whom he
loved, and which had caused him so many hours and days of chagrin,
vexation, and pain.

But almost as soon as he arrived at this conclusion another voice
seemed to speak within him and mockingly to ask him if he should ever
get the chance to wear the suit again--that it was too late--he had
chosen his course and must now abide the issue.

'It is not too late,' came the quick answer of his better self; and
full of the thought, he rose up to go home and divest himself of the
now hateful costume right away. He paused for one look at the
beautiful scene. The light lay pale and mellow, softening every
outline of rock and tree and house-top, and deepening the shadows into
velvety-black, and lighting, as with a pale flame, the incoming tide,
that now crept fringe-like across the flat waste of sand. Then he left
the rock and stepped out for the shore.

But as he did so a frightful spasm of horror shook him, and for an
instant the blood rushing to his head shut out all the light of the
full moon. Once more he saw that fatal image of himself moving beyond
the quicksand from the opposite rock to the shore. The shock was all
the greater for the contrast with the spell of peace which he had just
enjoyed; and, almost paralysed in every sense, he stood and watched
the fatal vision and the wrinkly, crawling quicksand that seemed to
writhe and yearn for something that lay between. There could be no
mistake this time, for though the moon behind threw the face into
shadow he could see there the same shaven cheeks as his own, and the
small stubby moustache of a few weeks' growth. The light shone on the
brilliant tartan, and on the eagle's plume. Even the bald space at one
side of the Glengarry cap glistened, as did the cairngorm brooch on
the shoulder and the tops of the silver buttons. As he looked he felt
his feet slightly sinking, for he was still near the edge of the belt
of quicksand, and he stepped back. As he did so the other figure
stepped forward, so that the space between them was preserved.

So the two stood facing each other, as though in some weird
fascination; and in the rushing of the blood through his brain Markam
seemed to hear the words of the prophecy: 'See thyself face to face,
and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee.' He did stand face to face
with himself, he had repented--and now he was sinking in the
quicksand! The warning and prophecy were coming true.

Above him the seagulls screamed, circling round the fringe of the
incoming tide, and the sound being entirely mortal recalled him to
himself. On the instant he stepped back a few quick steps, for as yet
only his feet were merged in the soft sand. As he did so the other
figure stepped forward, and coming within the deadly grip of the
quicksand began to sink. It seemed to Markam that he was looking at
himself going down to his doom, and on the instant the anguish of his
soul found vent in a terrible cry. There was at the same instant a
terrible cry from the other figure, and as Markam threw up his hands
the figure did the same. With horror-struck eyes he saw him sink
deeper into the quicksand; and then, impelled by what power he knew
not, he advanced again towards the sand to meet his fate. But as his
more forward foot began to sink he heard again the cries of the
seagulls which seemed to restore his benumbed faculties. With a mighty
effort he drew his foot out of the sand which seemed to clutch it,
leaving his shoe behind, and then in sheer terror he turned and ran
from the place, never stopping till his breath and strength failed
him, and he sank half swooning on the grassy path through the
sandhills.

       *       *       *       *       *

Arthur Markam made up his mind not to tell his family of his terrible
adventure--until at least such time as he should be complete master of
himself. Now that the fatal double--his other self--had been engulfed
in the quicksand he felt something like his old peace of mind.

That night he slept soundly and did not dream at all; and in the
morning was quite his old self. It really seemed as though his newer
and worser self had disappeared for ever; and strangely enough Saft
Tammie was absent from his post that morning and never appeared there
again, but sat in his old place watching nothing, as of old, with
lack-lustre eye. In accordance with his resolution he did not wear his
Highland suit again, but one evening tied it up in a bundle, claymore,
dirk and philibeg and all, and bringing it secretly with him threw it
into the quicksand. With a feeling of intense pleasure he saw it
sucked below the sand, which closed above it into marble smoothness.
Then he went home and announced cheerily to his family assembled for
evening prayers:

'Well! my dears, you will be glad to hear that I have abandoned my
idea of wearing the Highland dress. I see now what a vain old fool I
was and how ridiculous I made myself! You shall never see it again!'

'Where is it, father?' asked one of the girls, wishing to say
something so that such a self-sacrificing announcement as her father's
should not be passed in absolute silence. His answer was so sweetly
given that the girl rose from her seat and came and kissed him. It
was:

'In the quicksand, my dear! and I hope that my worser self is buried
there along with it--for ever.'

       *       *       *       *       *

The remainder of the summer was passed at Crooken with delight by all
the family, and on his return to town Mr. Markam had almost forgotten
the whole of the incident of the quicksand, and all touching on it,
when one day he got a letter from the MacCallum More which caused him
much thought, though he said nothing of it to his family, and left it,
for certain reasons, unanswered. It ran as follows:--

      'The MacCallum More and Roderick MacDhu.
        'The Scotch All-Wool Tartan Clothing Mart.
          Copthall Court, E.C.,
            30th September, 1892.

'Dear Sir,--I trust you will pardon the liberty which I take in
writing to you, but I am desirous of making an inquiry, and I am
informed that you have been sojourning during the summer in
Aberdeenshire (Scotland, N.B.). My partner, Mr. Roderick MacDhu--as he
appears for business reasons on our bill-heads and in our
advertisements, his real name being Emmanuel Moses Marks of
London--went early last month to Scotland (N.B.) for a tour, but as I
have only once heard from him, shortly after his departure, I am
anxious lest any misfortune may have befallen him. As I have been
unable to obtain any news of him on making all inquiries in my power,
I venture to appeal to you. His letter was written in deep dejection
of spirit, and mentioned that he feared a judgment had come upon him
for wishing to appear as a Scotchman on Scottish soil, as he had one
moonlight night shortly after his arrival seen his 'wraith'. He
evidently alluded to the fact that before his departure he had
procured for himself a Highland costume similar to that which we had
the honour to supply to you, with which, as perhaps you will remember,
he was much struck. He may, however, never have worn it, as he was, to
my own knowledge, diffident about putting it on, and even went so far
as to tell me that he would at first only venture to wear it late at
night or very early in the morning, and then only in remote places,
until such time as he should get accustomed to it. Unfortunately he
did not advise me of his route so that I am in complete ignorance of
his whereabouts; and I venture to ask if you may have seen or heard of
a Highland costume similar to your own having been seen anywhere in
the neighbourhood in which I am told you have recently purchased the
estate which you temporarily occupied. I shall not expect an answer to
this letter unless you can give me some information regarding my
friend and partner, so pray do not trouble to reply unless there be
cause. I am encouraged to think that he may have been in your
neighbourhood as, though his letter is not dated, the envelope is
marked with the postmark of "Yellon" which I find is in Aberdeenshire,
and not far from the Mains of Crooken.

  'I have the honour to be, dear sir,
      'Yours very respectfully,
          'JOSHUA SHEENY COHEN BENJAMIN
            '(The MacCallum More.)'





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Dracula's Guest" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.