A Book of Ghosts: 16
Author: Various authors
Date: 1837-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror
Description: A collection of ten stories of the uncanny and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 16 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of ten stories of the uncanny and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1838 ~ 1912. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- Ligeia  –1838
by Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849)

- The Haunted and the Haunters  –1859
by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton
(1803–1873)

- No 5 Branch Line: The Engineer  –1866
by Amelia B. Edwards
(1831–1892)

- The Signalman  –1875
by Charles Dickens
(1812–1870)

- Let Loose  –1890
by Mary Cholmondeley
(1859–1925)

- The Mystery of the Semi-Detached  –1893
by Edith Nesbit
(1858–1924)

- The Mystic Spell  –1899
by Dick Donovan
(1842–1934)

- Sredni Vashtar  –1910
by Saki (H. H. Munro)
(1870–1916)

- The Interlopers  –1912
by Saki (H. H. Munro)
(1870–1916)

- The Frozen Man  –1912
by John Trevena
(1870–1948)

LIGEIA

Edgar Allan Poe

1838

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mystery of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.
—Joseph Glanvill.

I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family—I have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone—by Ligeia—that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my bethrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own—a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself—what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance—if ever she, the wan misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream—an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. “There is no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, “without some strangeness in the proportion.” Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity—although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed “exquisite,” and felt that there was much of “strangeness” pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of “the strange.” I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead—it was faultless—how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine!—the skin rivaling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant, and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, “hyacinthine!” I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose—and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly—the magnificent turn of the short upper lip—the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under—the dimples which sported, and the color which spoke—the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin—and, here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek—the contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals—in moments of intense excitement—that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty—in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps—the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth—the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. The “strangeness,” however, which I found in the eyes was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it—that something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact—never, I believe, noticed in the schools—than in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression—felt it approaching—yet not quite be mine—and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh, strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always around, within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly growing vine—in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean—in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven (one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness—who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment: “And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

Length of years and subsequent reflection have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me,—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice,—and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.

I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense—such as I have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the Academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly—how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have never known in woman—but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph—with how vivid a delight—with how much of all that is ethereal in hope did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought—but less known,—that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden.

How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant luster of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too—too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most gentle emotion. I saw that she must die—and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed—I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild desire for life—for life—but for life—solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle—grew more low—yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I hearkened, entranced, to a melody more than mortal—to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions?—how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of my making them? But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in Ligeia’s more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length, recognized the principle of her longing, with so wildly earnest a desire, for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild longing—it is this eager vehemence of desire for life—but for life—that I have no power to portray—no utterance capable of expressing.

At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me, peremptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were these:—

Lo! ’tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their condor wings

Invisible Woe!

That motley drama!—oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot;

And much of Madness, and more of Sin

And Horror, the soul of the plot!

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all:

And over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm—

And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

And its hero, the conqueror Worm.

“O God!” half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines—“O God! O Divine Father!—shall these things be undeviatingly so?—shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who—who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I bent to them my ear, and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in Glanvill: “Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

She died: and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more, than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased and put in some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a display of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste, and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities I must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither, in a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride—as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia—the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.

There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is not visibly before me. Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have said, that I minutely remember the details of the chamber—yet I am sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment; and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic display to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagonal was the sole window—an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice—a single pane, and tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon passing through it, fell with a ghastly luster on the objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge window extended the trellis-work of an aged vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires.

Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about; and there was the couch, too—the bridal couch—of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic in height—even unproportionably so—were hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry—tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies—giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.

In halls such as these—in a bridal chamber such as this—I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage—passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper—that she shunned me, and loved me but little—I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I reveled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty—her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathways she had abandoned—ah, could it be forever?—upon the earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescent—finally, well. Yet but a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds—of the slight sounds—and of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear—of motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich luster thrown from the censer, a shadow—a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect—such as might be fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If this I saw—not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I forebore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia—and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony—the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror—but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse—but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally operated to restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our preparations—that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet the turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants—there were none within call—I had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes—and this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shriveled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia.

An hour thus elapsed, when (could it be possible?) I was a second time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I listened—in extremity of horror. The sound came again—it was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw—distinctly saw—a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that I at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I chafed and bathed the temples and the hands and used every exertion which experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.

And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia—and again (what marvel that I shudder while I write?), again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead once again stirred—and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the countenance—the limbs relaxed—and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and draperies of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then, altogether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the middle of the apartment.

I trembled not—I stirred not—for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor, of the figure, rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed—had chilled me into stone. I stirred not—but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts—a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it, indeed, be Rowena at all—the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth—but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks—there were the roses as in her noon of life—yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers?—but had she then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber huge masses of long and disheveled hair; it was blacker than the raven wings of midnight. And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. “Here then, at least,” I shrieked aloud, “can I never—can I never be mistaken—these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes—of my lost love—of the Lady—of the LADY LIGEIA.”

THE HAUNTED
AND THE HAUNTERS

Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton

1859

A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, “Fancy! since we last met, I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London.”

“Really haunted?—and by what? ghosts?”

“Well, I can’t answer that question: all I know is this—six weeks ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a hill, ‘Apartments Furnished.’ The situation suited us; we entered the house—liked the rooms—engaged them by the week—and left them the third day. No power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I don’t wonder at it.”

“What did you see?”

“Excuse me—I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious dreamer—nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be—and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week. She said, dryly, ‘I know why: you have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever stay a second night; none before you a third. But I take it they have been very kind to you.’

“‘They—who?’ I asked, affecting to smile.

“‘Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don’t mind them; I remember them from many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don’t care—I’m old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them, and in this house still.’ The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness, that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and I to get off so cheaply.”

“You excite my curiosity,” said I; “nothing I should like better than to sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one which you left so ignominiously.”

My friend gave me the address; and when we parted, I walked straight towards the house thus indicated.

It is situated on the north side of oxford Street (in a dull but respectable thoroughfare). I found the house shut up—no bill at the window, and no response to my knock. As I was turning away, a beer-boy, collecting pewter pots at the neighbouring areas, said to me, “Do you want any one at that house, sir?”

“Yes, I heard it was to be let.”

“Let!—why, the woman who kept it is dead—has been dead these three weeks, and no one can be found to stay there, though Mr. J—— offered ever so much. He offered Mother, who chars for him, a pound a week just to open and shut the windows, and she would not.”

“Would not!—and why?”

“The house is haunted; and the old woman who kept it was found dead in her bed, with her eyes wide open. They say the devil strangled her.”

“Pooh!—you speak of Mr. J——. Is he the owner of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Where does he live?”

“What is he—in any business?”

“No, sir—nothing particular; a single gentleman.”

I gave the pot-boy the gratuity earned by his liberal information, and proceeded to Mr. J——, in G—— Street, which was close by the street that boasted the haunted house. I was lucky enough to find Mr. J—— at home, an elderly man, with intelligent countenance and prepossessing manners.

I communicated my name and my business frankly. I said I heard the house was considered to be haunted—that I had a strong desire to examine a house with so equivocal a reputation—that I should be greatly obliged if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. “Sir,” said Mr. J——, with great courtesy, “the house is at your service, for as short or as long a time as you please. Rent is out of the question—the obligation will be on my side should you be able to discover the cause of the strange phenomena which at present deprive it of all value. I cannot let it, for I cannot even get a servant to keep it in order or answer the door. Unluckily the house is haunted, if I may use that expression, not only by night, but by day; though at night the disturbances are of a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more alarming character. The poor old woman who died in it three weeks ago was a pauper whom I took out of a workhouse, for in her childhood she had been known to some of my family, and had once been in such good circumstances that she had rented that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior education and strong mind, and was the only person I could ever induce to remain in the house. Indeed, since her death, which was sudden, and the coroner’s inquest, which gave it a notoriety in the neighbourhood, I have so despaired of finding any person to take charge of the house, much more a tenant, that I would willingly let it rent-free for a year to any one who would pay its rates and taxes.”

“How long is it since the house acquired this sinister character?”

“That I can scarcely tell you, but very many years since. The old woman I spoke of said it was haunted when she rented it between thirty and forty years ago. The fact is, that my life has been spent in the East Indies, and in the civil service of the Company. I returned to England last year, on inheriting the fortune of an uncle, among whose possessions was the house in question. I found it shut up and uninhabited. I was told that it was haunted, that no one would inhabit it. I smiled at what seemed to be so idle a story. I spent some money in repairing it—added to its old-fashioned furniture a few modern articles—advertised it, and obtained a lodger for a year. He was a colonel retired on half-pay. He came in with his family, a son and a daughter, and four or five servants: they all left the house the next day; and, although each of them declared that he had seen something different from that which had scared the others, a something still was equally terrible to all. I really could not in conscience sue, nor even blame, the colonel for breach of agreement. Then I put in the old woman I have spoken of, and she was empowered to let the house in apartments. I never had one lodger who stayed more than three days. I do not tell you their stories—to no two lodgers have there been exactly the same phenomena repeated. It is better that you should judge for yourself, than enter the house with an imagination influenced by previous narratives; only be prepared to see and to hear something or other, and take whatever precautions you yourself please.”

“Have you never had a curiosity yourself to pass a night in that house?”

“Yes. I passed not a night, but three hours in broad daylight alone in that house. My curiosity is not satisfied but it is quenched. I have no desire to renew the experiment. You cannot complain, you see, sir, that I am not sufficiently candid; and unless your interest be exceedingly eager and your nerves unusually strong, I honestly add, that I advise you not to pass a night in that house.”

“My interest is exceedingly keen,” said I, “and though only a coward will boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfamiliar to him, yet my nerves have been seasoned in such variety of danger that I have the right to rely on them—even in a haunted house.”

Mr. J—— said very little more; he took the keys of the house out of his bureau, gave them to me—and, thanking him cordially for his frankness, and his urbane concession to my wish, I carried off my prize.

Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I reached home, I summoned my confident servant—a young man of gay spirits, fearless temper, and as free from superstitious prejudices as any one I could think of.

“F——,” said I, “you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at not finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there tonight. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow itself to be seen or to be heard—something, perhaps, excessively horrible. Do you think if I take you with me, I may rely on your presence of mind, whatever may happen?”

“Oh, sir! pray trust me,” answered F——, grinning with delight.

“Very well; then here are the keys of the house—this is the address. Go now—select for me any bedroom you please; and since the house has not been inhabited for weeks, make up a good fire—air the bed well—see, of course, that there are candles as well as fuel. Take with you my revolver and my dagger—so much for my weapons—arm yourself equally well; and if we are not a match for a dozen ghosts, we shall be but a sorry couple of Englishmen.”

I was engaged for the rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my honour. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay’s Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there was so much of the healthfulness in the style, and practical life in the subjects, that it would serve as an antidote against the influence of superstitious fancy.

Accordingly, about half-past nine, I put the book into my pocket, and strolled leisurely towards the haunted house. I took with me a favourite dog—an exceedingly sharp, bold and vigilant bull-terrier—a dog fond of prowling about strange ghostly corners and passages at night in search of rats—a dog of dogs for a ghost.

It was a summer night, but chilly, the sky somewhat gloomy and overcast. Still there was a moon—faintly and sickly, but still a moon—and if the clouds permitted, after midnight it would be brighter.

I reached the house, knocked, and my servant opened with a cheerful smile.

“All right, sir, and very comfortable.”

“Oh!” said I, rather disappointed; “have you not seen nor heard anything remarkable?”

“Well, sir, I must own I have heard something queer.”

“What—what?”

“The sound of feet pattering behind me; and once or twice small noises like whispers close at my ear—nothing more.”

“You are not at all frightened?”

“I! not a bit of it, sir,” and the man’s bold look reassured me on one point—viz., that happen what might, he would not desert me.

We were in the hall, the street-door closed, and my attention was now drawn to my dog. He had at first run in eagerly enough, but had sneaked back to the door, and was scratching and whining to get out. After patting him on the head, and encouraging him gently, the dog seemed to reconcile himself to the situation, and followed me and F—— through the house, but keeping close at my heels instead of hurrying inquisitively in advance, which was his usual and normal habit in all strange places. We first visited the subterranean apartments, the kitchen and other offices, and especially the cellars, in which last there were two or three bottles of wine still left in a bin, covered with cobwebs, and evidently, by their appearance, undisturbed for many years. It was clear that the ghosts were not wine-bibbers. For the rest we discovered nothing of interest. There was a gloomy little backyard with very high walls. The stones of this yard were very damp; and what with the damp, and what with the dust and smoke-grime on the pavement, our feet left a slight impression where we passed.

And now appeared the first strange phenomenon witnessed by myself in this strange abode. I saw, just before me, the print of a foot suddenly form itself, as it were. I stopped, caught hold of my servant, and pointed to it. In advance of that footprint as suddenly dropped another. We both saw it. I advanced quickly to the place; the footprint kept advancing before me, a small footprint—the foot of a child; the impression was too faint thoroughly to distinguish the shape, but it seemed to us both that it was the print of a naked foot. This phenomenon ceased when we arrived at the opposite wall, nor did it repeat itself on returning. We remounted the stairs, and entered the rooms on the ground floor, a dining parlour, a small back parlour, and a still smaller third room that had been probably appropriated to a footman—all still as death. We then visited the drawing-rooms, which seemed fresh and new. In the front room I seated myself in an armchair. F—— placed on the table the candlestick with which he had lighted us. I told him to shut the door. As he had turned to do so, a chair opposite to me moved from the wall quickly and noiselessly, and dropped itself about a yard from my own chair, immediately fronting it.

“Why, this is better than the turning tables,” said I, with a half laugh; and as I laughed, my dog put back his head and howled.

F——, coming back, had not observed the movement of the chair. He employed himself now in stilling the dog. I continued to gaze on the chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale blue misty outline of a human figure, but an outline so indistinct that I could only distrust my own vision. The dog now was quiet.

“Put back that chair opposite me,” said I to F——; “put it back to the wall.”

F—— obeyed. “Was that you, sir?” said he, turning abruptly.

“I!—what?”

“Why, something struck me. I felt it sharply on the shoulder—just here.”

“No,” said I. “But we have jugglers present, and though we may not discover their tricks, we shall catch them before they frighten us.”

We did not stay long in the drawing rooms—in fact, they felt so damp and so chilly that I was glad to get to the fire upstairs. We locked the doors of the drawing rooms—a precaution which, I should observe, we had taken with all the rooms we had searched below. The bedroom my servant had selected for me was the best on the floor—a large one, with two windows fronting the street. The four-posted bed, which took up no inconsiderable space, was opposite to the fire, which burned clear and bright; a door in the wall to the left, between the bed and the window, communicated with the room which my servant appropriated to himself. This last was a small room with a sofa bed, and had no communication with the landing-place—no other door but that which conducted to the bedroom I was to occupy. On either side of my fireplace was a cupboard, without locks, flush with the wall and covered with the same dull-brown paper. We examined these cupboards—only hooks to suspend female dresses—nothing else; we sounded the walls—evidently solid—the outer walls of the building. Having finished the survey of these apartments, warmed myself a few moments, and lighted my cigar, I then, still accompanied by F——, went forth to complete my reconnoitre. In the landing-place there was another door; it was closed firmly. “Sir,” said my servant, in surprise, “I unlocked this door with all the others when I first came; it cannot have got locked from the inside, for—”

Before he had finished his sentence, the door, which neither of us then was touching, opened quietly of itself. We looked at each other a single instant. The same thought seized both—some human agency might be detected here. I rushed in first, my servant followed. A small blank dreary room without furniture—few empty boxes and hampers in a corner—a small window—the shutters closed—not even a fireplace—no other door than that by which we had entered—no carpet on the floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing round, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as it had before opened: we were imprisoned.

For the first time I felt a creep of undefinable horror. Not so my servant. “Why, they don’t think to trap us, sir; I could break the trumpery door with a kick of my foot.”

“Try first if it will open to your hand,” said I, shaking off the vague apprehension that had seized me, “while I unclose the shutters and see what is without.”

I unbarred the shutters—the window looked on the little back yard I have before described; there was no ledge without—nothing to break the sheer descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found any footing till he had fallen on the stones below.

F——, meanwhile, was vainly attempting to open the door. He now turned round to me and asked my permission to use force. And I should here state, in justice to the servant, that, far from evincing any superstitious terrors, his nerve, composure, and even gayety amidst circumstances so extraordinary, compelled my admiration, and made me congratulate myself on having secured a companion in every way fitted to the occasion. I willingly gave him the permission he required. But though he was a remarkably strong man, his force was as idle as his milder efforts; the door did not even shake to his stoutest kick. Breathless and panting, he desisted. I then tried the door myself, equally in vain. As I ceased from the effort, again that creep of horror came over me; but this time it was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some strange and ghastly exhalation were rising up from the chinks of that rugged floor, and filling the atmosphere with a venomous influence hostile to human life. The door now very slowly and quietly opened as of its own accord. We precipitated ourselves into the landing-place. We both saw a large pale light—as large as the human figure but shapeless and unsubstantial—move before us, and ascend the stairs that led from the landing into the attics. I followed the light, and my servant followed me. It entered, to the right of the landing, a small garret, of which the door stood open. I entered in the same instant. The light then collapsed into a small globule, exceedingly brilliant and vivid; rested a moment on a bed in the corner, quivered, and vanished.

We approached the bed and examined it—a half-tester, such as is commonly found in attics devoted to servants. On the drawers that stood near it we perceived an old faded silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a rent half repaired. The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had belonged to the old woman who had died in that house, and this might have been her sleeping room. I had sufficient curiosity to open the drawers: there were a few odds and ends of female dress, and two letters tied round with a narrow ribbon of faded yellow. I took the liberty to possess myself of the letters. We found nothing else in the room worth noticing—nor did the light reappear; but we distinctly heard, as we turned to go, a pattering footfall on the floor—just before us. We went through the other attics (in all four), the footfall still preceding us. Nothing to be seen—nothing but the footfall heard. I had the letters in my hand: just as I was descending the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a faint soft effort made to draw the letters from my clasp. I only held them the more tightly, and the effort ceased.

We regained the bedchamber appropriated to myself, and I then remarked that my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He was thrusting himself close to the fire, and trembling. I was impatient to examine the letters; and while I read them, my servant opened a little box in which he had deposited the weapons I had ordered him to bring; took them out, placed them on a table close at my bed-head, and then occupied himself in soothing the dog, who, however, seemed to heed him very little.

The letters were short—they were dated; the dates exactly thirty-five years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his mistress, or a husband to some young wife. Not only the terms of expression, but a distinct reference to a former voyage, indicated the writer to have been a seafarer. The spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly educated, but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions of endearment there was a kind of rough wild love; but here and there were dark and unintelligible hints at some secret not of love—some secret that seemed of crime. “We ought to love each other,” was one of the sentences I remember, “for how every one else would execrate us if all was known.” Again: “Don’t let any one be in the same room with you at night—you talk in your sleep.” And again: “What’s done can’t be undone; and I tell you there’s nothing against us unless the dead could come to life.” Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female’s), “They do!” At the end of the letter latest in date the same female hand had written these words: “Lost at sea the 4th of June, the same day as—”

I put down the letters, and began to muse over their contents.

Fearing, however, that the train of thought into which I fell might unsteady my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind in a fit state to cope with whatever of the marvellous the advancing night might bring forth. I roused myself—laid the letters on the table—stirred up the fire, which was still bright and cheering—and opened my volume of Macaulay. I read quietly enough till about half-past eleven. I then threw myself dressed upon the bed, and told my servant he might retire to his own room, but must keep himself awake. I bade him leave open the doors between the two rooms. Thus alone, I kept two candles burning on the table by my bed-head. I placed my watch beside the weapons, and calmly resumed my Macaulay. Opposite to me the fire burned clear; and on the hearthrug, seemingly asleep, lay the dog. In about twenty minutes I felt an exceedingly cold air pass by my cheek, like a sudden draught. I fancied the door to my right, communicating with the landing-place, must have got open; but no—it was closed. I then turned my glance to my left, and saw the flame of the candles violently swayed as by a wind. At the same moment the watch beside the revolver softly slid from the table—softly, softly—no visible hand—it was gone. I sprang up, seizing the revolver with the one hand, the dagger with the other: I was not willing that my weapons should share the fate of the watch. Thus armed, I looked round the floor—no sign of the watch. Three slow, loud, distinct knocks were now heard at the bed-head; my servant called out, “Is that you, sir?”

“No; be on your guard.”

The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving quickly backwards and forwards. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a look so strange that he concentrated all my attention on himself. Slowly he rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the same wild stare. I had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently my servant emerged from his room; and if ever I saw horror in the human face, it was then. I should not have recognized him had we met in the street, so altered was every lineament. He passed by me quickly, saying in a whisper that seemed scarcely to come from his lips, “Run—run! it is after me!” He gained the door to the landing, pulled it open, and rushed forth. I followed him into the landing involuntarily, calling him to stop; but, without heeding me, he bounded down the stairs, clinging to the balusters, and taking several steps at a time. I heard, where I stood, the street-door open—heard it again clap to. I was left alone in the haunted house.

It was but for a moment that I remained undecided whether or not to follow my servant; pride and curiosity alike forbade so dastardly a flight. I re-entered my room, closing the door after me, and proceeded cautiously into the interior chamber. I encountered nothing to justify my servant’s terror. I again carefully examined the walls, to see if there were any concealed door. I could find no trace of one—not even a seam in the dull brown paper with which the room was hung. How, then, had the THING, whatever it was, which had so scared him, obtained ingress except through my own chamber?

I returned to my room, shut and locked the door that opened upon the interior one, and stood on the hearth, expectant and prepared. I now perceived that the dog had slunk into an angle of the wall, and was pressing himself close against it, as if literally striving to force his way into it. I approached the animal and spoke to it; the poor brute was evidently beside itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to recognize me. Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on the table beside the fire, seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay.

Perhaps, in order not to appear seeking credit for a courage, or rather a coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may be pardoned if I pause to indulge in one or two egotistical remarks.

As I hold presence of mind, or what is called courage, to be precisely proportioned to familiarity with the circumstances that lead to it, so I should say that I had been long sufficiently familiar with all experiments that appertain to the Marvellous. I had witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena in various parts of the world—phenomena that would be either totally disbelieved if I stated them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that the Supernatural is the Impossible, and that what is called supernatural is only a something in the laws of nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I have not the right to say, “So, then, the supernatural is possible,” but rather, “So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary to received opinion, within the laws of nature—i.e.., not supernatural.”

Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material living agency is always required. On the continent you will still find magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for the moment that they assert truly, still the living material form of the magician is present; and he is the material agency by which, from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are represented to your natural senses.

Accept, again, as truthful, the tales of spirit manifestation in America—musical or other sounds—writings on paper, produced by no discernible hand—articles of furniture moved without apparent human agency—or the actual sight and touch of hands, to which no bodies seem to belong—still there must be found the MEDIUM or living being, with constitutional peculiarities capable of obtaining these signs. In fine, in all such marvels, supposing even that there is no imposture, there must be a human being like ourselves by whom, or through whom, the effects presented to human beings are produced. It is so with the now familiar phenomena of mesmerism or electro-biology; the mind of the person operated on is affected through a material living agent. Nor, supposing it true that a mesmerized patient can respond to the will or passes of a mesmerizer a hundred miles distant, is the response less occasioned by a material fluid—call it Electric, call it Odic, call it what you will—which has the power of traversing space and passing obstacles, that the material effect is communicated from one to the other. Hence all that I had hitherto witnessed, or expected to witness, in this strange house, I believed to be occasioned through some agency or medium as mortal as myself: and this idea necessarily prevented the awe with which those who regard as supernatural things that are not within the ordinary operations of nature might have been impressed by the adventures of that memorable night.

As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented; or would be presented to my senses, must originate in some human being gifted by constitution with the power so to present them, and having some motive so to do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way, was rather philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist could be in awaiting the effect of some rare, though perhaps perilous, chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept my mind detached from fancy, the more the temper fitted for observation would be obtained; and I therefore riveted eye and thought on the strong daylight sense in the page of my Macaulay.

I now became aware that something interposed between the page and the light—the page was overshadowed: I looked up, and I saw what I shall find very difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe.

It was a Darkness shaping itself forth from the air in very undefined outline. I cannot say it was of a human form, and yet it had more resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than to anything else. As it stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light around it, its dimensions seemed gigantic, the summit nearly touching the ceiling. While I gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An iceberg before me could not more have chilled me; nor could the cold of an iceberg have been more purely physical. I feel convinced that it was not the cold caused by fear. As I continued to gaze, I thought—but this I cannot say with precision—that I distinguished two eyes looking down on me from the height. One moment I fancied that I distinguished them clearly, the next they seemed gone; but still two rays of a pale-blue light frequently shot through the darkness, as from the height on which I half believed, half doubted, that I had encountered the eyes.

I strove to speak—my voice utterly failed me; I could only think to myself, “Is this fear? it is not fear!” I strove to rise—in vain; I felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to any volition—that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond man’s, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to my will was another will, as far superior to its strength as storm, fire, and shark are superior in material force to the force of man.

And now, as this impression grew on me—now came, at last, horror—horror to a degree that no words can convey. Still I retained pride, if not courage; and in my own mind I said, “This is horror, but it is not fear; unless I fear I cannot be harmed; my reason rejects this thing, it is an illusion—I do not fear.” With a violent effort I succeeded at last in stretching out my hand towards the weapon on the table; as I did so, on the arm and shoulder I received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side powerless. And now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from the candles; they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame seemed very gradually withdrawn; it was the same with the fire—the light was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room was in utter darkness.

The dread that came over me, to be thus in the dark with that dark Thing, whose power was so intensely felt, brought a reaction of nerve. In fact, terror had reached that climax, that either my senses must have deserted me, or I must have burst through the spell. I did burst through it. I found voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke forth with words like these—“I do not fear, my soul does not fear” and at the same time I found strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of the windows—tore aside the curtain—flung open the shutters; my first thought was—light. And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror. There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas lamps in the deserted slumberous street. I turned to look back into the room; the moon penetrated its shadow very palely and partially—but still there was light. The dark Thing, whatever it might be, was gone—except that I could yet see a dim shadow, which seemed the shadow of that shade, against the opposite wall.

My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was without cloth or cover—an old mahogany round table) there rose a hand, visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person—lean, wrinkled, small, too—a woman’s hand. That hand very softly closed on the two letters that lay on the table: hand and letters both vanished. There then came the same three loud measured knocks I heard at the bed-head before this extraordinary drama had commenced.

As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly; and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules like bubbles of light, many-coloured—green, yellow, fire-red, azure. Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o’-the-Wisps the sparks moved slow or swift, each at his own caprice. A chair (as in the drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without apparent agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly as forth from the chair, there grew a shape—a woman’s shape. It was distinct as a shape of life—ghastly as a shape of death. The face was that of youth, with a strange mournful beauty: the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the form in a loose robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long yellow hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned towards me, but to the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting. The shadow of the shade in the background grew darker; and again I thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out from the summit of the shadow—eyes fixed upon that shape.

As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly—a man’s shape—a young man’s. It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and the female, though defined, were evidently unsubstantial, impalpable—simulacra—phantasms); and there was something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghostlike stillness of the flitting wearer. Just as the male shape approached the female, the dark shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as in the grasp of the shadow that towered between them; and there was a bloodstain on the breast of the female; and the phantom male was leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow swallowed them up—they were gone. And again the bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and thicker and more wildly confused in their movements.

The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from the aperture there came the form of an aged woman. In her hand she held letters—the very letters over which I had seen the Hand close; and behind her I heard a footstep. She turned round as if to listen, and then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long drowned—bloated, bleached, seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a form as of a corpse, and beside the corpse there cowered a child, a miserable squalid child, with famine in its cheeks and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old woman’s face, the wrinkles and lines vanished and it became a face of youth—hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted forth, and darkened over these phantoms as it had darkened over the last.

Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow—malignant, serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disorder, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other—forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I concentrated all my faculties in the single focus of resisting, stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow—above all, from those strange serpent eyes—eyes that had now become distinctly visible. For there, though in nought else round me, I was aware that there was a WILL, and a will of intense, creative, working evil, which might crush down on my own.

The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the air of some near conflagration. The larvae grew lurid as things that live in fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three measured knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in the darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had come, into that darkness all returned.

As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly as it had been withdrawn, the flame grew again into the candles on the table, again into the fuel in the grate. The whole room came once more calmly, healthfully into sight.

The two doors were still closed, the door communicating with the servant’s room still locked. In the corner of the wall into which he had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog. I called to him—no movement; I approached—the animal was dead; his eyes protruded; his tongue out of his mouth; the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him in my arms; I brought him to the fire, I felt acute grief for the loss of my poor favourite—acute self-reproach; I accused myself of his death; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken. Had this been done in the dark?—must it not have been by a hand human as mine?—must there not have been a human agency all the while in that room? Good cause to suspect it. I cannot tell. I cannot do more than state the fact fairly; the reader may draw his own inference.

Another surprising circumstance—my watch was restored to the table from which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped at the very moment it was so withdrawn; nor, despite all the skill of the watchmaker, has it ever gone since—that is, it will go in a strange erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop—it is worthless.

Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, indeed, had I long to wait before the dawn broke. Nor till it was broad daylight did I quit the haunted house. Before I did so, I revisited the little blind room in which my servant and myself had been for a time imprisoned. I had a strong impression—for which I could not account—that from that room had originated the mechanism of the phenomena—if I may use the term—which had been experienced in my chamber. And though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sun peering through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood on its floor, the creep of the horror which I had first there experienced the night before, and which had been so aggravated by what had passed in my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear to stay more than half a minute within those walls. I descended the stairs, and again I heard the footfall before me; and when I opened the street door, I thought I could distinguish a very low laugh. I gained my own home, expecting to find my runaway servant there. But he had not presented himself; nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I received a letter from him, dated from Liverpool to this effect:

“Honoured Sir—

I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcely hope that you will think I deserve it, unless—which Heaven forbid—you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I can recover myself and as to being fit for service, it is out of the question. I am therefore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne. The ship sails tomorrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me up. I do nothing now but start and tremble, and fancy IT is behind me. I humbly beg you, honoured sir, to order my clothes, and whatever wages are due to me, to be sent to my mother’s, at Walworth. John knows her address.”

The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and explanatory details as to effects that had been under the writer’s charge.

This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man wished to go to Australia, and had been somehow or other fraudulently mixed up with the events of the night. I say nothing in refutation of that conjecture; rather, I suggest it as one that would seem to many persons the most probable solution of improbable occurrences. My belief in my own theory remained unshaken. I returned in the evening to the house, to bring away in a hack cab the things I had left up there, with my poor dog’s body. In the task I was not disturbed, nor did any incident worth note befall me, except that still, on ascending and descending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr. J——’s. He was at home. I returned him the keys, told him that my curiosity was sufficiently gratified, and was about to relate quickly what had passed, when he stopped me, and said, though with much politeness, that he had no longer any interest in a mystery which none had ever solved.

I determined at least to tell him of the two letters in which I had read, as well as of the extraordinary manner in which they had disappeared, and I then inquired if he thought they had been addressed to the woman who had died in the house, and if there were anything in her early history which could possibly confirm the dark suspicions to which the letters gave rise. Mr. J—— seemed startled, and, after musing a few moments, answered, “I am but little acquainted with the woman’s earlier history, except, as I before told you, that her family were known to mine. But you revive some vague reminiscences to her prejudice. I will make inquiries, and inform you of their result. Still, even if we could admit the popular superstition that a person who had been either the perpetrator or the victim of dark crimes in life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the scene in which those crimes had been committed, I should observe that the house was infested by strange sights and sounds before the old woman died—you smile—what would you say?”

“I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the bottom of these mysteries, we should find a living human agency.”

“What! you believe it is all an imposture? for what object?”

“Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If suddenly I were to sink into a deep sleep, from which you could not awake me, but in that sleep could answer questions with an accuracy which I could not pretend to when awake—tell you what money you had in your pocket—nay, describe your very thoughts—it is not necessarily an imposture, any more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a human being who had acquired power over me by previous rapport.”

“But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being, can you suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimate objects: move chairs—open and shut doors?”

“Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects—we never having been en rapport with the person acting on us? No. What is commonly called mesmerism could not do this; but there may be a power akin to mesmerism, and superior to it—the power that in the old days was called Magic. That such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of matter I do not say; but if so, it would not be against nature—it would be only a rare power in nature which might be given to constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated by practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might extend over the dead—that is, over certain thoughts and memories that the dead may still retain—and compel, not that which ought properly to be called the SOUL, and which is far beyond human reach, but rather a phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to make itself apparent to our senses—is a very ancient though obsolete theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of the Curiosities of Literature cites as credible: A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you can never discover nor re-collect them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that flower, raise a spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in life. It may be the same with the human being. The soul has as much escaped you as the essence or elements of the flower. Still you may make a spectrum of it.

“And this phantom, though in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul of the departed, must not be confounded with the true soul; it is but an eidolon of the dead form. Hence, like the best attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing that most strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul; that is, of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come for little or no object—they seldom speak when they do come; if they speak, they utter no ideas above those of an ordinary person on earth. American spirit-seers have published volumes of communications in prose and verse, which they assert to be given in the names of the most illustrious dead—Shakespeare, Bacon—heaven knows whom. Those communications, taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than would be communications from living persons of fair talent and education; they are wondrously inferior to what Bacon, Shakespeare, and Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor, what is more noticeable, do they ever contain an idea that was not on the earth before. Wonderful, therefore, as such phenomena may be (granting them to be truthful), I see much that philosophy may question, nothing that it is incumbent on philosophy to deny, viz., nothing supernatural. They are but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet discovered the means) from one mortal brain to another. Whether, in so doing, tables walk of their own accord, or fiend-like shapes appear in a magic circle, or bodiless hands rise and remove material objects, or a Thing of Darkness, such as presented itself to me, freeze our blood—still am I persuaded that these are but agencies conveyed, as if by electric wires, to my own brain from the brain of another. In some constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and these constitutions may produce chemic wonders—in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders.

“But the wonders differ from Normal Science in this—they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I believe unconsciously to himself as to the exact effects produced, for this reason: no two persons, you say, have ever told you that they experienced exactly the same thing. Well, observe, no two persons ever experience exactly the same dream. If this were an ordinary imposture, the machinery would be arranged for results that would but little vary; if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the Almighty, it would surely be for some definite end. These phenomena belong to neither class; my persuasion is, that they originate in some brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that it has been the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant and destructive, I believe; some material force must have killed my dog; the same force might, for ought I know, have sufficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by terror as the dog—had my intellect or my spirit given me no countervailing resistance in my will.”

“It killed your dog! that is fearful! indeed it is strange that no animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Rats and mice are never found in it.”

“The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their existence. Man’s reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory?”

“Yes, though imperfectly—and I accept any crotchet (pardon the word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and hob-goblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house the evil is the same. What on earth can I do with the house?”

“I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my own internal feelings that the small unfurnished room at right angles to the door of the bedroom which I occupied, forms a starting point or receptacle for the influences which haunt the house; and I strongly advise you to have the walls opened, the floor removed—nay, the whole room pulled down. I observed that it is detached from the body of the house, built over the small back yard, and could be removed without injury to the rest of the building.”

“And you think, if I did that—”

“You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so persuaded that I am right, that I will pay half the expenses if you will allow me to direct the operations.”

“Nay, I am well able to afford the cost; for the rest, allow me to write to you.” About ten days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. J——, telling me that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found the two letters I had described replaced in the drawer from which I had taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly conjectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six years ago (a year before the date of the letters) she had married, against the wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious character, in fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate. She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the capacity of nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about six years old. A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of “found drowned.”

The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only child—and in the event of the child’s death, the sister inherited. The child died about six months afterwards—it was supposed to have been neglected and ill-treated. The neighbours deposed to have heard it shriek at night. The surgeon who had examined it after death said that it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was covered with livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child had sought to escape—crept out into the back yard—tried to scale the wall—fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan’s death the aunt inherited her brother’s fortune. Before the first wedded year was out the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in the Atlantic two years afterwards. The widow was left in affluence; but reverses of various kinds had befallen her; a bank broke—an investment failed—she went into a small business and became insolvent—then she entered into the service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down to maid-of-all work—never long retaining a place, though nothing decided against her character was ever alleged. She was considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still nothing prospered with her. And so she had dropped into the workhouse, from which Mr. J—— had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very house which she had rented as mistress in the first years of her wedded life.

Mr. J—— added that he had passed an hour alone in the unfurnished room which I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen anything, that he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and would commence any day I would name.

The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house—he went into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into a room below, the existence of which had never been suspected. In this room there had been a window and a flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently for many years. By the help of candles we examined this place; it still retained some mouldering furniture—three chairs, an oak settle, a table—all of the fashion of about eighty years ago. There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in which we found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man’s dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank—costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword—in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the lock of which it cost us much trouble to get picked.

In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers. Ranged on the shelves were several bottles of crystal, hermetically stopped. They contained colourless volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that they were not poisons—phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock-crystal, and another of amber—also a loadstone of great power.

In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in gold, and retaining the freshness of its colours most remarkably, considering the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight.

It was a remarkable face—a most impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into a man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal—the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw—the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald—and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the consciousness of an immense power.

Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the back of it, and on the back was engraved a pentacle; in the middle of the pentacle a ladder, and the third step of the ladder was formed by the date 1765. Examining still more minutely, I detected a spring; this, on being pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. Withinside the lid were engraved, “Marianna to thee—be faithful in life and in death to——.” Here follows a name that I will not mention, but it was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it spoken by old men in my childhood as the name borne by a dazzling charlatan who had made a great sensation in London for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a double murder within his own house—that of his mistress and his rival. I said nothing of this to Mr. J——, to whom reluctantly I resigned the miniature.

We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within the iron safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second: it was not locked, but it resisted all efforts, till we inserted in the chinks the edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth we found a very singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon a small thin book, or rather tablet, was placed a saucer of crystal: this saucer was filled with a clear liquid—on that liquid floated a kind of compass, with a needle shifting rapidly round; but instead of the usual points of a compass were seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by astrologers to denote the planets.

A particular, but not strong nor displeasing odour came from this drawer, which was lined with a wood that we afterwards discovered to be hazel. Whatever the cause of this odour, it produced a material effect on the nerves. We all felt it, even the two workmen who were in the room—a creeping tingling sensation from the tips of the fingers to the roots of the hair. Impatient to examine the tablet, I removed the saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass went round and round with exceeding swiftness, and I felt a shock that ran through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor. The liquid was spilt—the saucer was broken—the compass rolled to the end of the room—and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a giant had swayed and rocked them. The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which we had descended from the trapdoor; but seeing that nothing more happened, they were easily induced to return.

Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in plain red leather, with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and on that sheet were inscribed within a double pentacle, words in old monkish Latin, which are literally to be translated thus:

On all that it can reach within these walls—sentient or inanimate, living or dead—as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the house, and restless be the dwellers therein.

We found no more. Mr. J—— burnt the tablet and its anathema. He razed to the foundations the part of the building containing the secret room with the chamber over it. He had then the courage to inhabit the house himself for a month, and a quieter, better-conditioned house could not be found in all London. Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his tenant has made no complaints.

NO 5 BRANCH LINE:
THE ENGINEER

Amelia B. Edwards

1866

His name was Matthew Price; mine is Benjamin Hardy. We were born within a few days of each other; bred up in the same village; taught at the same school. I cannot remember the time when we were not close friends. Even as boys, we never knew what it was to quarrel. We had not a thought, we had not a possession, that was not in common. We would have stood by each other fearlessly, to the death. It was such a friendship as one reads about sometimes in books—fast and firm as the great Tors upon our native moorlands, true as the sun in the heavens.

The name of our village was Chadleigh. Lifted high above the pasture-flats which stretched away at our feet like a measureless green lake and melted into mist on the farthest horizon, it nestled, a tiny stone-built hamlet, in a sheltered hollow about midway between the plain and the plateau.

Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids’ Tor, King’s Tor, Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of bloody heathen rites were performed.

Bones, too, had been found there, and arrowheads, and ornaments of gold and glass. I had a vague awe of the Tors in those boyish days, and would not have gone near them after dark for the heaviest bribe.

I have said that we were born in the same village. He was the son of a small farmer, named William Price, and the eldest of a family of seven; I was the only child of Ephraim Hardy, the Chadleigh blacksmith—a well-known man in those parts, whose memory is not forgotten to this day.

Just so far as a farmer is supposed to be a bigger man than a blacksmith, Mat’s father might be said to have a better standing than mine; but William Price, with his small holding and his seven boys was, in fact, as poor as many a day-labourer; whilst the blacksmith, well-to-do, bustling, popular, and open-handed, was a person of some importance in the place.

All this, however, had nothing to do with Mat and myself. It never occurred to either of us that his jacket was out at elbows, or that our mutual funds came altogether from my pocket. It was enough for us that we sat on the same school-bench, conned our tasks from the same primer, fought each other’s battles, screened each other’s faults, fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds’ nests together, and spent every half hour, authorised or stolen, in each other’s society.

It was a happy time; but it could not go on forever. My father, being prosperous, resolved to put me forward in the world. I must know more and do better than himself. The forge was not good enough, the little world of Chadleigh not wide enough, for me. Thus it happened that I was still swinging the satchel when Mat was whistling at the plough, and that at last, when my future course was shaped out, we were separated, as it then seemed to us, for life.

For, blacksmith’s son as I was, furnace and forge, in some form or other, pleased me best. I chose to be a working engineer. So my father by-and-by apprenticed me to a Birmingham iron-master; and, having bidden farewell to Mat, and Chadleigh, and the grey old Tors in the shadow of which I had spent all the days of my life, I turned my face northward, and went over into “the Black Country”.

I am not going to dwell on this part of my story. How I worked out the term of my apprenticeship; how, when I had served my full time and become a skilled workman, I took Mat from the plough and brought him over to the Black Country, sharing with him lodgings, wages, experience—all, in short, that I had to give; how he, naturally quick to learn and brimful of quiet energy, worked his way up a step at a time, and came by-and-by to be a “first hand” in his own department; how, during all these years of change, and trial, and effort, the old boyish affection never wavered or weakened, but went on growing with our growth and strengthening with our strength—are facts which I need do no more than outline in this place.

About this time—it will be remembered that I speak of the days when Mat and I were on the bright side of thirty—it happened that our firm contracted to supply six first-class locomotives to run on the new line, then in progress of construction, between Turin and Genoa. It was the first Italian order we had taken.

We had had dealings with France, Holland, Belgium, Germany; but never with Italy. The connection, therefore, was new and valuable—all the more valuable because our Transalpine neighbours had but lately begun to lay down the iron roads, and would be safe to need more of our good English work as they went on. So the Birmingham firm set themselves to the contract with a will, lengthened our working hours, increased our wages, took on fresh hands, and determined, if energy and promptitude could do it, to place themselves at the head of the Italian labour-market, and stay there. They deserved and achieved success.

The six locomotives were not only turned out to time, but were shipped, despatched, and delivered with a promptitude that fairly amazed our Piedmontese consignee. I was not a little proud, you may be sure, when I found myself appointed to superintend the transport of the engines. Being allowed a couple of assistants, I contrived that Mat should be one of them; and thus we enjoyed together the first great holiday of our lives.

It was a wonderful change for two Birmingham operatives fresh from the Black Country. Genoa, that fairy city, with its crescent background of Alps; the port crowded with strange shipping; the marvellous blue sky and bluer sea; the painted houses on the quays; the quaint cathedral faced with black and white marble; the street of jewellers, like an Arabian Nights’ bazaar; the street of palaces with its Moorish courtyards, its fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the galley-slaves chained two and two, the processions of priests and friars; the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the singular lightness and brightness of the climate—made, altogether, such a combination of wonders that we wandered about the first day in a kind of bewildered dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was ended, being tempted by the beauty of the place and the liberality of the pay, we had agreed to take service with the Turin and Genoa Railway Company, and to turn our backs upon Birmingham forever.

Then began a new life—a life so active and healthy, so steeped in fresh air and sunshine, that we sometimes marvelled how we could have endured the gloom of the Black Country. We were constantly up and down the line—now at Genoa, now at Turin, taking trial trips with the locomotives, and placing our old experience at the service of our new employers.

In the meanwhile we made Genoa our headquarters, and hired a couple of rooms over a small shop in a by-street sloping down to the quays. Such a busy little street—so steep and winding that no vehicles could pass through it, and so narrow that the sky looked like a mere strip of deep blue ribbon overhead! Every house in it, however, was a shop where the goods encroached on the footway, or were piled about the door, or hung like tapestry from the balconies; and all day long, from dawn till dusk, an incessant stream of passers-by poured up and down between the port and the upper quarter of the city.

Our landlady was the widow of a silver-worker, and lived by the sale of filigree ornaments, cheap jewellery, combs, fans, and toys in ivory and jet. She had an only daughter, named Gianetta, who served in the shop and was simply the most beautiful woman I ever beheld. Looking back across this weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I can and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to detect a flaw in her beauty. I do not attempt to describe her. I do not believe there is a poet living who could find the words to do it; but I once saw a picture that was somewhat like her (not half so lovely, but still like her), and for aught I know, that picture is still hanging where I last looked at it—upon the walls of the Louvre.

It represented a woman with brown eyes and golden hair, looking over her shoulder into a circular mirror held by a bearded man in the background. In this man, as I then understood, the artist had painted his own portrait; in her, the portrait of the woman he loved. No picture that I ever saw was half so beautiful, and yet it was not worthy to be named in the same breath with Gianetta Coneglia.

You may be certain the widow’s shop did not want for customers. All Genoa knew how fair a face was to be seen behind that dingy little counter; and Gianetta, flirt as she was, had more lovers than she cared to remember, even by name. Gentle and simple, rich and poor, from the red-capped sailor buying his earrings or his amulet, to the nobleman carelessly purchasing half the filigrees in the window, she treated them all alike—encouraged them, laughed at them, led them on and turned them off at her pleasure. She had no more heart than a marble statue; as Mat and I discovered by-and-by, to our bitter cost.

I cannot tell to this day how it came about, or what first led me to suspect how things were going with us both; but long before the waning of that autumn a coldness had sprung up between my friend and myself. It was nothing that could have been put into words. It was nothing that either of us could have explained or justified, to save his life. We lodged together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we even took our long evening’s walk together, when the day’s labour was ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere looker-on could have detected a shadow of change. Yet there it was, silent and subtle, widening the gulf between us every day.

It was not his fault. He was too true and gentle-hearted to have willingly brought about such a state of things between us. Neither do I believe—fiery as my nature is—that it was mine. It was all hers—hers from first to last—the sin, and the shame, and the sorrow.

If she had shown a fair and open preference for either of us, no real harm could have come of it. I would have put any constraint upon myself, and heaven knows! have borne any suffering, to see Mat really happy. I know that he would have done the same, and more if he could, for me. But Gianetta cared not one bajocco for either. She never meant to choose between us.

It gratified her vanity to divide us; it amused her to play with us. It would pass my power to tell how, by a thousand imperceptible shades of coquetry—by the lingering of a glance, the substitution of a word, the flitting of a smile—she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our hearts, and lead us on to love her. She deceived us both. She buoyed us both up with hope; she maddened us with jealousy; she crushed us with despair. For my part, when I seemed now and then to wake to a sudden sense of the ruin that was about our path, and saw how the truest friendship that ever bound two lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked myself whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me and I to him. But this was not often. I was readier to shut my eyes upon the truth than to face it; and so lived on, wilfully, in a dream.

Thus the autumn passed away, and winter came—the strange, treacherous Genoese winter, green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and bitter with storm. Still, rivals at heart and friends on the surface, Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo Balba. Still, Gianetta held us with her fatal wiles and her still more fatal beauty. At length there came a day when I felt I could bear the horrible misery and suspense of it no longer. The sun, I vowed, should not go down before I knew my sentence. She must choose between us. She must either take me or let me go. I was reckless. I was desperate. I was determined to know the worst or the best. If the worst, I would at once turn my back upon Genoa, upon her, upon all the pursuits and purposes of my past life, and begin the world anew. This I told her, passionately and sternly, standing before her in the little parlour at the back of the shop, one bleak December morning.

“If it’s Mat whom you care for most,” I said, “tell me so in one word, and I will never trouble you again. He is better worth your love. I am jealous and exacting; he is as trusting and unselfish as a woman. Speak, Gianetta; am I to bid you good-bye for ever and ever, or am I to write home to my mother in England, bidding her pray to God to bless the woman who has promised to be my wife?”

“You plead your friend’s cause well,” she replied haughtily. “Matteo ought to be grateful. This is more than he ever did for you.”

“Give me an answer, for pity’s sake,” I exclaimed, “and let me go!”

“You are free to go or stay, Signor Inglese,” she replied, “I am not your gaoler.”

“Do you bid me leave you?”

“Beata Madre! not I.”

“Will you marry me, if I stay?”

She laughed aloud—such a merry, mocking, musical laugh, like a chime of silver bells!

“You ask too much,” she said.

“Only what you have led me to hope these five or six months past.”

“That is just what Matteo says. How tiresome you both are!”

“Oh, Gianetta,” I said, passionately, “be serious for one moment! I am a rough fellow, it is true—not half good enough or clever enough for you; but I love you with my whole heart, and an emperor could do no more.”

“I am glad of it,” she replied; “I do not want you to love me less.”

“Than you cannot wish to make me wretched! Will you promise me?”

“I promise nothing,” said she, with another burst of laughter; “except that I will not marry Matteo!”

Except that she would not marry Matteo! Only that. Not a word of hope for myself. Nothing but my friend’s condemnation. I might get comfort, and selfish triumph, and some sort of base assurance out of that, if I could. And so, to my shame, I did. I grasped at the vain encouragement, and, fool that I was! let her put me off again unanswered. From that day I gave up all effort at self-control, and let myself drift blindly on—to destruction.

At length things became so bad between Mat and myself that it seemed as if an open rupture must be at hand. We avoided each other, scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences in a day, and fell away from all our old familiar habits. At this time—I shudder to remember it!—there were moments when I felt that I hated him.

Thus, with the trouble deepening and widening between us day by day, another month or five weeks went by, and February came; and, with February, the carnival. They said in Genoa that it was a particularly dull carnival; and so it must have been, for, save a flag or two hung out in some of the principal streets, and a sort of festa look about the women, there were no special indications of the season. It was, I think, the second day of the carnival, when, having been on the line all the morning, I returned to Genoa at dusk, and to my surprise found Mat Price on the platform. He came up to me and laid his hand on my arm.

“You are in late,” he said. “I have been waiting for you three-quarters-of-an-hour. Shall we dine together today?”

Impulsive as I am, this evidence of returning good will at once called up my better feelings.

“With all my heart, Mat,” I replied; “shall we go to Gozzoli’s?”

“No, no,” he said, hurriedly. “Some quieter place—some place where we can talk. I have something to say to you.”

I noticed now that he looked pale and agitated, and an uneasy sense of apprehension stole upon me. We decided on The Pescatore, a little out-of-the-way trattoria, down near the Molo Vecchio. There, in a dingy salon frequented chiefly by seamen, and redolent of tobacco, we ordered our simple dinner. Mat scarcely swallowed a morsel, but, calling presently for a bottle of Sicilian wine, drank eagerly.

“Well, Mat,” I said, as the last dish was placed on the table, “what news have you?”

“Bad.”

“I guessed that from your face.”

“Bad for you—bad for me. Gianetta——”

“What of Gianetta?”

He passed his hand nervously across his lips.

“Gianetta is false—worse than false,” he said in a hoarse voice. “She values an honest man’s heart just as she values a flower for her hair—wears it for a day, then throws it aside for ever. She has cruelly wronged us both.”

“In what way? Good heavens, speak out!”

“In the worst way that a woman can wrong those who love her. She has sold herself to the Marchese Loredano.”

The blood rushed to my head and face in a burning torrent. I could scarcely see, and dared not trust myself to speak.

“I saw her going towards the cathedral,” he went on, hurriedly. “It was about three hours ago. I thought she might be going to confession, so I hung back and followed her at a distance. When she got inside, however, she went straight to the back of the pulpit, where this old man was waiting for her. You remember him—an old man who used to haunt the shop a month or two back. Well, seeing how deep in conversation they were, and how they stood close under the pulpit with their backs towards the church, I fell into a passion of anger and went straight up the aisle, intending to say or do something, I scarcely knew what; but, at all events, to draw her arm through mine, and take her home. When I came within a few feet, however, and found only a big pillar between myself and them, I paused. They could not see me, nor I them; but I could hear their voices distinctly, and—and I listened.”

“Well, and you heard——”

“The terms of a shameful bargain—beauty on the one side, gold on the other; so many thousand francs a year; a villa near Naples—pah! it makes me sick to repeat it.”

And with a shudder, he poured out another glass of wine and drank it at a draught.

“After that,” he said presently, “I made no effort to bring her away. The whole thing was so cold-blooded, so deliberate, so shameful, that I felt I had only to wipe her out of my memory, and leave her to her fate. I stole out of the cathedral, and walked about here by the sea for ever so long, trying to get my thoughts straight. Then I remembered you, Ben; and the recollection of how this wanton had come between us and broken up our lives drove me wild. So I went up to the station and waited for you. I felt you ought to know it all; and—and I thought, perhaps, that we might go back to England together.”

“The Marchese Loredano!”

It was all that I could say; all that I could think. As Mat had just said of himself, I felt “like one stunned.”

“There is one other thing I may as well tell you,” he added, reluctantly, “if only to show you how false a woman can be. We—we were to have been married next month.”

“We? Who? What do you mean?”

“I mean that we were to have been married—Gianetta and I.”

A sudden storm of rage, of scorn, of incredulity swept over me at this, and seemed to carry my senses away.

“You!” I cried. “Gianetta marry you! I don’t believe it.”

“I wish I had not believed it,” he replied, looking up as if puzzled by my vehemence. “But she promised me; and I thought when she promised it she meant it.”

“She told me weeks ago that she would never be your wife!”

His colour rose; his brow darkened; but when his answer came, it was as calm as the last.

“Indeed,” he said. “Then it is only one baseness more. She told me that she had refused you; and that was why we kept our engagement secret.”

“Tell the truth, Mat Price,” I said, well-nigh beside myself with suspicion. “Confess that every word of this is false! Confess that Gianetta will not listen to you, and that you are afraid I may succeed where you have failed. As perhaps I shall—as perhaps I shall, after all!”

“Are you mad?” he exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“That I believe it’s just a trick to get me away to England—that I don’t credit a syllable of your story. You’re a liar, and I hate you!”

He rose, and laying one hand on the back of his chair, looked me sternly in the face.

“If you were not Benjamin Hardy,” he said, deliberately, “I would thrash you within an inch of your life.”

The words had no sooner passed his lips than I sprang at him. I have never been able distinctly to remember what followed. A curse—a blow—a struggle—a moment of blind fury—a cry—a confusion of tongues—a circle of strange faces. Then I see Mat lying back in the arms of a bystander; myself trembling and bewildered—the knife dropping from my grasp; blood upon the floor; blood upon my hands; blood upon his shirt. And then I hear those dreadful words:

“Oh, Ben, you have murdered me!”

He did not die—at least, not there and then. He was carried to the nearest hospital, and lay for some weeks between life and death. His case, they said, was difficult and dangerous. The knife had gone in just below the collarbone, and pierced down into the lungs.

He was not allowed to speak or turn—scarcely to breathe with freedom. He might not even lift his head to drink. I sat by him day and night all through that sorrowful time. I gave up my situation on the railway; I quitted my lodging in the Vicolo Balba; I tried to forget that such a woman as Gianetta Coneglia had ever drawn breath.

I lived only for Mat; and he tried to live, more I believe for my sake than his own. Thus, in the bitter silent hours of pain and penitence, when no hand but mine approached his lips or smoothed his pillow, the old friendship came back with even more than its old trust and faithfulness. He forgave me fully and freely; and I would thankfully have given my life for him.

At length there came one bright spring morning, when, dismissed as convalescent, he tottered out through the hospital gates, leaning on my arm and feeble as an infant. He was not cured; neither, as I then learned to my horror and anguish, was it possible that he ever could be cured.

He might, with care, live for some years; but the lungs were injured beyond hope of remedy, and a strong or healthy man he could never be again. These, spoken aside to me, were the parting words of the chief physician, who advised me to take him further south without delay.

I took him to a little coast-town called Rocca, some thirty miles beyond Genoa—a sheltered lonely place along the Riviera, where the sea was even bluer than the sky, and the cliffs were green with strange tropical plants, cacti, and aloes, and Egyptian palms.

Here we lodged in the house of a small tradesman; and Mat, to use his own words, “set to work at getting well in good earnest”. But, alas! it was a work which no earnestness could forward. Day after day he went down to the beach, and sat for hours drinking the sea-air and watching the sails that came and went in the offing. By-and-by he could go no further than the garden of the house in which we lived.

A little later, and he spent his days on a couch beside the open window, waiting patiently for the end. Ay, for the end! It had come to that. He was fading fast—waning with the waning summer, and conscious that the reaper was at hand. His whole aim now was to soften the agony of my remorse and prepare me for what must shortly come.

“I would not live longer if I could,” he said, lying on his couch one summer evening and looking up to the stars. “If I had my choice at this moment, I would ask to go. I should like Gianetta to know that I forgave her.”

“She shall know it,” I said, trembling suddenly from head to foot.

He pressed my hand.

“And you’ll write to father?”

“I will.”

I had drawn a little back, that he might not see the tears raining down my cheeks; but he raised himself on his elbow, and looked round.

“Don’t fret, Ben,” he whispered; laid his head back wearily upon the pillow—and so died.

•    •    •    •

And this was the end of it. This was the end of all that made life life to me. I buried him there, in hearing of the wash of a strange sea on a strange shore. I stayed by the grave till the priest and the bystanders were gone. I saw the earth filled in to the last sod, and the gravedigger stamp it down with his feet.

Then, and not till then, I felt that I had lost him for ever—the friend I had loved, and hated, and slain. Then, and not till then, I knew that all rest, and joy, and hope were over for me. From that moment my heart hardened within me, and my life was filled with loathing. Day and night, land and sea, labour and rest, food and sleep, were alike hateful to me.

It was the curse of Cain, and that my brother had pardoned me made it lie none the lighter. Peace on earth was for me no more, and goodwill towards men was dead in my heart forever. Remorse softens some natures; but it poisoned mine. I hated all mankind, but above all mankind I hated the woman who had come between us two, and ruined both our lives.

He had bidden me seek her out, and be the messenger of his forgiveness. I had sooner have gone down to the port of Genoa and taken upon me the serge cap and shotted chain of any galley-slave at his toil in the public works; but for all that I did my best to obey him. I went back, alone and on foot. I went back, intending to say to her, “Gianetta Coneglia, he forgave you—but God never will.” But she was gone.

The little shop was let to a fresh occupant. The neighbours only knew that mother and daughter had left the place quite suddenly, and that Gianetta was supposed to be under the “protection” of the Marchese Loredano. How I made inquiries here and there—how I heard they had gone to Naples—and how, being restless and reckless of my time, I worked my passage in a French steamer, and followed her—how, having found the sumptuous villa that was now hers, I learned that she had left there some ten days and gone to Paris, where the Marchese was ambassador for the Two Sicilies—how, working my passage back again to Marseilles, and thence, in part by the river and in part by the rail, I made my way to Paris—how, day after day I paced the streets and the parks, watched at the ambassador’s gates, followed his carriage, and, at last, after weeks of waiting, discovered her address—how, having written to request an interview, her servants spurned me from her door, and flung my letter in my face—how, looking up at her windows, I then, instead of forgiving, solemnly cursed her with the bitterest curses my tongue could devise—and how, this done, I shook the dust of Paris from my feet and became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, are facts which I have no space to tell.

The next six or eight years of my life were shifting and unsettled enough. A morose and restless man, I took employment here and there as opportunity offered, turning my hand to many things, and caring little what I earned, so long as the work was hard and the change incessant. First of all I engaged myself as chief engineer in one of the French steamers plying between Marseilles and Constantinople. At Constantinople I changed to one of the Austrian Lloyds’ boats, and worked for some time to and from Alexandria, Jaffa, and those parts. After that, I fell in with a party of Mr. Layard’s men at Cairo, and so went up the Nile and took a turn at the excavations of the mound of Nimroud.

Then I became a working engineer on the new desert line between Alexandria and Suez; and by-and-by I worked my passage out to Bombay, and took service as an engine-fitter on one of the great Indian railways. I stayed a long time in India—that is to say, I stayed nearly two years, which was a long time for me; and I might not even have left so soon, but for the war that was declared just then with Russia. That tempted me. For I loved danger and hardship as other men love safety and ease; and as for my life, I had sooner have parted with it than have kept it any day. So I came straight back to England and betook myself to Portsmouth, where my testimonials at once procured me the sort of berth I wanted. I then went out to the Crimea in the engine-room of one of Her Majesty’s war-steamers.

I served with the fleet, of course, while the war lasted; and when it was over, went wandering off again, rejoicing in my liberty. This time I went to Canada, and after working on a railway then in progress near the American frontier, I presently passed over into the States; journeyed from north to south; crossed the Rocky Mountains; tried a month or two of life in the gold country; and then, being seized with a sudden, aching, unaccountable longing to revisit that solitary grave so far away on the Italian coast, I turned my face once more towards Europe.

Poor little grave! I found it rank with weeds, the cross half shattered, the inscription half effaced. It was as if no one had loved him or remembered him. I went back to the house in which we had lodged together. The same people were still living there, and made me kindly welcome. I stayed with them for some weeks. I weeded, and planted, and trimmed the grave with my own hands, and set up a fresh cross in pure white marble. It was the first season of rest that I had known since I laid him there; and when at last I shouldered my knapsack and set forth again to battle with the world, I promised myself that, God willing, I would creep back to Rocca when my days drew near to ending, and be buried by his side.

From hence, being, perhaps, a little less inclined than formerly for very distant parts, and willing to keep within reach of that grave, I went no further than Mantua, where I engaged myself as an engine-driver on the line, then not long completed, between that city and Venice. Somehow, although I had been trained to the working engineering, I preferred in these days to earn my bread by driving. I liked the excitement of it, the sense of power, the rush of the air, the roar of the fire, the flitting of the landscape. Above all, I enjoyed to drive a night-express. The worse the weather, the better it suited with my sullen temper. For I was as hard, and harder than ever. The years had done nothing to soften me. They had only confirmed all that was blackest and bitterest in my heart.

I continued pretty faithful to the Mantua line, and had been working on it steadily for more than seven months, when that which I am now about to relate took place.

It was in the month of March. The weather had been unsettled for some days past, and the nights stormy; and at one point along the line, near Ponte di Brenta, the waters had risen and swept away some seventy yards of embankment. Since this accident, the trains had all been obliged to stop at a certain spot between Padua and Ponte di Brenta, and the passengers, with their luggage, had thence to be transported in all kinds of vehicles, by a circuitous country-road, to the nearest station on the other side of the gap, where another train and engine awaited them. This, of course, caused great confusion and annoyance, put all our time-tables wrong, and subjected the public to a large amount of inconvenience.

In the meanwhile an army of navvies was drafted to the spot, and worked day and night to repair the damage. At this time I was driving two through-trains each day; namely, one from Mantua to Venice in the early morning, and a return train from Venice to Mantua in the afternoon—a tolerably full day’s work, covering about one hundred and ninety miles of ground, and occupying between ten and eleven hours.

I was therefore not best pleased when, on the third or fourth day after the accident, I was informed that, in addition to my regular allowance of work, I should that evening be required to drive a special train to Venice. This special train, consisting of an engine, a single carriage, and a break-van, was to leave the Mantua platform at eleven; at Padua the passengers were to alight and find post-chaises waiting to convey them to Ponte di Brenta; at Ponte di Brenta another engine, carriage, and break-van were to be in readiness. I was charged to accompany them throughout.

“Corpo di Bacco,” said the clerk who gave me my orders, “you need not look so black, man. You are certain of a handsome gratuity. Do you know who goes with you?”

“Not I.”

“Not you, indeed! Why, it’s the Duca Loredano, the Neapolitan ambassador.”

“Loredano!” I stammered. “What Loredano? There was a Marchese——”

“Certo. He was the Marchese Loredano some years ago; but he has come into his dukedom since then.”

“He must be a very old man by this time.”

“Yes, he is old; but what of that? He is as hale, and bright, and stately as ever. You have seen him before?”

“Yes,” I said, turning away; “I have seen him—years ago.”

“You have heard of his marriage?”

I shook my head.

The clerk chuckled, rubbed his hands, and shrugged his shoulders.

“An extraordinary affair,” he said. “Made a tremendous esclandre at the time. He married his mistress—quite a common, vulgar girl—a Genoese—very handsome; but not received of course. Nobody visits her.”

“Married her!” I exclaimed. “Impossible.”

“True, I assure you.”

I put my hand to my head. I felt as if I had had a fall or a blow.

“Does she—does she go tonight?” I faltered.

“Oh dear, yes—goes everywhere with him—never lets him out of her sigh. You’ll see her—la bella Duchessa!”

With this my informant laughed and rubbed his hands again, and went back to his office.

The day went by, I scarcely know how, except that my whole soul was in a tumult of rage and bitterness. I returned from my afternoon’s work about 7.25, and at 10.30 I was once again at the station. I had examined the engine, given instructions to the Fochista, or stoker, about the fire, seen to the supply of oil, and got all in readiness, when, just as I was about to compare my watch with the clock in the ticket-office, a hand was laid upon my arm, and a voice in my ear said:

“Are you the engine-driver who is going on with this special train?”

I had never seen the speaker before. He was a small, dark man, muffled up about the throat, with blue glasses, a large black beard, and his hat drawn low upon his eyes.

“You are a poor man, I suppose,” he said, in a quick, eager whisper, “and, like other poor men, would not object to be better off. Would you like to earn a couple of thousand florins?”

“In what way?”

“Hush! You are to stop at Padua, are you not, and to go on again at Ponte di Brenta?”

I nodded.

“Suppose you did nothing of the kind. Suppose, instead of turning off the steam, you jump off the engine, and let the train run on?”

“Impossible. There are seventy yards of embankment gone, and——”

“Basta! I know that. Save yourself, and let the train run on. It would be nothing but an accident.”

I turned hot and cold! I trembled; my heart beat fast, and my breath failed.

“Why do you tempt me?” I faltered.

“For Italy’s sake,” he whispered; “for liberty’s sake. I know you are no Italian; but for all that you may be a friend. This Loredano is one of his country’s bitterest enemies. Stay, here are the two thousand florins.”

I thrust his hand back fiercely.

“No—no,” I said. “No blood-money. If I do it, I do it neither for Italy nor for money; but for vengeance.”

“For vengeance?” he repeated.

At this moment a signal was given for backing up to the platform. I sprang to my place upon the engine without another word. When I again looked towards the spot where he had been standing, the stranger had gone.

I saw them take their places—duke and duchess, secretary and priest, valet and maid. I saw the station-master bow them into the carriage, and stand, bareheaded, beside the door. I could not distinguish their faces; the platform was too dusk, and the glare from the engine-fire too strong; but I recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head. Had I not been told who she was, I should have known her by those traits alone. Then the guard’s whistle shrilled out, and the station-master made his last bow; I turned the steam on, and we started.

My blood was on fire. I no longer trembled or hesitated. I felt as if every nerve was iron, and every pulse instinct with deadly purpose. She was in my power, and I would be revenged. She should die—she for whom I had stained my soul with my friend’s blood! She should die in the plenitude of her wealth and her beauty, and no power on earth should save her!

The stations flew past. I put on more steam; I bade the fireman heap in the coke, and stir the blazing mass. I would have outstripped the wind, had it been possible. Faster and faster—hedges and trees, bridges and stations, flashing past—villages no sooner seen than gone—telegraph wires twisting, and dipping, and twining themselves in one, with the awful swiftness of our pace! Faster and faster, till the fireman at my side looks white and scared, and refuses to add more fuel to the furnace! Faster and faster till the wind rushes in our faces and drives the breath back upon our lips!

I would have scorned to save myself. I meant to die with the rest. Mad as I was—and I believe from my soul that I was utterly mad for the time—I felt a passing pang of pity for the old man and his suite. I would have spared the poor fellow at my side, too, if I could; but the pace at which we were going made escape impossible.

Vicenza was passed—a mere confused vision of lights. Pojana flew by. At Padua, but nine miles distant, our passengers were to alight. I saw the fireman’s face turned upon me in remonstrance; I saw his lips move, though I could not hear a word; I saw his expression change suddenly from remonstrance to a deadly terror; and then—merciful heaven! then for the first time I saw that he and I were no longer alone upon the engine.

There was a third man—a third man standing on my right hand, as the fireman was standing on my left—a tall, stalwart man, with short curling hair, and a flat Scotch cap upon his head. As I fell back in my first shock of surprise he stepped forward, took my place at the engine, and turned the steam off. I opened my lips to speak to him. He turned his head slowly, and looked me in the face.

Matthew Price!

I uttered one long cry, flung my hands wildly up above my head, and fell as if I had been smitten with an axe.

•    •    •    •

I am prepared for the objections that may be made to my story. I expect, as a matter of course, to be told that this was an optical illusion; or that I was suffering from pressure on the brain; or even that I laboured under an attack of temporary insanity. I have heard all these arguments before, and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, I have no desire to hear them again. My own mind has been made up on the subject for many a year. All that I can say—all that I know is—that Matthew Price came back from the dead to save my soul and the lives of those whom I, in my guilty rage, would have hurried to destruction. I believe this as I believe in the mercy of heaven and the forgiveness of repentant sinners.

THE SIGNALMAN

Charles Dickens

1875

“Halloa! Below there!”

When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.

“Halloa! Below!”

From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.

“Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?”

He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him re-furling the flag he had shown while the train went by.

I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to him, “All right!” and made for that point. There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched out, which I followed.

The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path.

When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.

I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.

Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand.

This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.

He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel’s mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and then looked at me.

That light was part of his charge? Was it not?

He answered in a low voice—“Don’t you know it is?”

The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.

In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight.

“You look at me,” I said, forcing a smile, “as if you had a dread of me.”

“I was doubtful,” he returned, “whether I had seen you before.”

“Where?”

He pointed to the red light he had looked at.

“There?” I said.

Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), “Yes.”

“My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear.”

“I think I may,” he rejoined. “Yes; I am sure I may.”

His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work—manual labour—he had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here,—if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.

He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut,—he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another.

All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his grave, dark regards divided between me and the fire. He threw in the word, “Sir,” from time to time, and especially when he referred to his youth,—as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was done.

In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel. On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far asunder.

Said I, when I rose to leave him, “You almost make me think that I have met with a contented man.”

(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)

“I believe I used to be so,” he rejoined, in the low voice in which he had first spoken; “but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled.”

He would have recalled the words if he could. He had said them, however, and I took them up quickly.

“With what? What is your trouble?”

“It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, very difficult to speak of. If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you.”

“But I expressly intend to make you another visit. Say, when shall it be?”

“I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to-morrow night, sir.”

“I will come at eleven.”

He thanked me, and went out at the door with me. “I’ll show my white light, sir,” he said, in his peculiar low voice, “till you have found the way up. When you have found it, don’t call out! And when you are at the top, don’t call out!”

His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said no more than, “Very well.”

“And when you come down to-morrow night, don’t call out! Let me ask you a parting question. What made you cry, ‘Halloa! Below there!’ to-night?”

“Heaven knows,” said I. “I cried something to that effect—”

“Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well.”

“Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I saw you below.”

“For no other reason?”

“What other reason could I possibly have?”

“You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way?”

“No.”

He wished me good-night, and held up his light. I walked by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me) until I found the path. It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.

Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. “I have not called out,” I said, when we came close together; “may I speak now?” “By all means, sir.” “Good-night, then, and here’s my hand.” “Good-night, sir, and here’s mine.” With that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down by the fire.

“I have made up my mind, sir,” he began, bending forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, “that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took you for some one else yesterday evening. That troubles me.”

“That mistake?”

“No. That some one else.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like me?”

“I don’t know. I never saw the face. The left arm is across the face, and the right arm is waved,—violently waved. This way.”

I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”

“One moonlight night,” said the man, “I was sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, ‘Halloa! Below there!’ I started up, looked from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, ‘Look out! Look out!’ And then again, ‘Halloa! Below there! Look out!’ I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, ‘What’s wrong? What has happened? Where?’ It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it was gone.”

“Into the tunnel?” said I.

“No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both ways, ‘An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong?’ The answer came back, both ways, ‘All well.’ ”

Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. “As to an imaginary cry,” said I, “do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires.”

That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires,—he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching. But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.

I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm,—

“Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood.”

A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life.

He again begged to remark that he had not finished.

I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.

“This,” he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, “was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again.” He stopped, with a fixed look at me.

“Did it cry out?”

“No. It was silent.”

“Did it wave its arm?”

“No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands before the face. Like this.”

Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.

“Did you go up to it?”

“I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone.”

“But nothing followed? Nothing came of this?”

He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice giving a ghastly nod each time:—

“That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.”

Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at which he pointed to himself.

“True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you.”

I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail.

He resumed. “Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled. The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since, it has been there, now and again, by fits and starts.”

“At the light?”

“At the Danger-light.”

“What does it seem to do?”

He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that former gesticulation of, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”

Then he went on. “I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out!’ It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell—”

I caught at that. “Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you went to the door?”

“Twice.”

“Why, see,” said I, “how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it did NOT ring at those times. No, nor at any other time, except when it was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station communicating with you.”

He shook his head. “I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I have never confused the spectre’s ring with the man’s. The ghost’s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don’t wonder that you failed to hear it. But I heard it.”

“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?”

“It WAS there.”

“Both times?”

He repeated firmly: “Both times.”

“Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?”

He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. There were the stars above them.

“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot.

“No,” he answered. “It is not there.”

“Agreed,” said I.

We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.

“By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre mean?”

I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.

“What is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. “What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do?”

He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead.

“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. “I should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work,—Message: ‘Danger! Take care!’ Answer: ‘What Danger? Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know. But, for God’s sake, take care!’ They would displace me. What else could they do?”

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.

“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident was to happen,—if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted,—if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?”

When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention: and I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.

That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either.

But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision?

Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly.

Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my signal-man’s box.

Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.

The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.

With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,—with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did,—I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.

“What is the matter?” I asked the men.

“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”

“Not the man belonging to that box?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not the man I know?”

“You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,” said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising an end of the tarpaulin, “for his face is quite composed.”

“O, how did this happen, how did this happen?” I asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in again.

“He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom.”

The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel.

“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!’ ”

I started.

“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.”

•   •   •   •   •

Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.

LET LOOSE

Mary Cholmondeley

1890

The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold

Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still.

Some years ago I took up architecture, and made a tour through Holland, studying the buildings of that interesting country.

I was not then aware that it is not enough to take up art. Art must take you up, too. I never doubted but that my passing enthusiasm for her would be returned. When I discovered that she was a stern mistress, who did not immediately respond to my attentions, I naturally transferred them to another shrine. There are other things in the world besides art. I am now a land scape gardener.

But at the time of which I write I was engaged in a violent flirtation with architecture. I had one companion on this expedition, who has since become one of the leading architects of the day. He was a thin, determined-looking man with a screwed-up face and heavy jaw, slow of speech, and absorbed in his work to a degree which I quickly found tiresome. He was possessed of a certain quiet power of overcoming obstacles which I have rarely seen equalled. He has since become my brother-in-law, so I ought to know; for my parents did not like him much and opposed the marriage, and my sister did not like him at all, and refused him over and over again; but, nevertheless, he eventually married her.

I have thought since that one of his reasons for choosing me as his travelling companion on this occasion was because he was getting up steam for what he subsequently termed “an alliance with my family,” but the idea never entered my head at the time. A more careless man as to dress I have rarely met, and yet, in all the heat of July in Holland, I noticed that he never appeared without a high, starched collar, which had not even fashion to commend it at that time.

I often chaffed him about his splendid collars, and asked him why he wore them, but without eliciting any response. One evening, as we were walking back to our lodgings in Middleberg, I attacked him for about the thirtieth time on the subject.

“Why on earth do you wear them?” I said.

“You have, I believe, asked me that question many times,” he replied, in his slow, precise utterance; “but always on occasions when I was occupied. I am now at leisure, and I will tell you.”

And he did.

I have put down what he said, as nearly in his own words as I can remember them.

•   •   •   •   •

Ten years ago, I was asked to read a paper on English Frescoes at the Institute of British Architects. I was determined to make the paper as good as I could, down to the slightest details, and I consulted many books on the subject, and studied every fresco I could find. My father, who had been an architect, had left me, at his death, all his papers and note-books on the subject of architecture. I searched them diligently, and found in one of them a slight unfinished sketch of nearly fifty years ago that specially interested me. Underneath was noted, in his clear, small hand – Frescoed east wall of crypt. Parish Church. Wet Waste-on-the-Wolds, Yorkshire (viâ Pickering.)

The sketch had such a fascination for me that I decided to go there and see the fresco for myself. I had only a very vague idea as to where Wet Waste-on-the-Wolds was, but I was ambitious for the success of my paper; it was hot in London, and I set off on my long journey not without a certain degree of pleasure, with my dog Brian, a large nondescript brindled creature, as my only companion.

I reached Pickering, in Yorkshire, in the course of the afternoon, and then began a series of experiments on local lines which ended, after several hours, in my finding myself deposited at a little out-of-the-world station within nine or ten miles of Wet Waste. As no conveyance of any kind was to be had, I shouldered my portmanteau, and set out on a long white road that stretched away into the distance over the bare, treeless wold. I must have walked for several hours, over a waste of moorland patched with heather, when a doctor passed me, and gave me a lift to within a mile of my destination. The mile was a long one, and it was quite dark by the time I saw the feeble glimmer of lights in front of me, and found that I had reached Wet Waste. I had considerable difficulty in getting any one to take me in; but at last I persuaded the owner of the public-house to give me a bed, and, quite tired out, I got into it as soon as possible, for fear he should change his mind, and fell asleep to the sound of a little stream below my window.

I was up early next morning, and inquired directly after breakfast the way to the clergy man’s house, which I found was close at hand. At Wet Waste everything was close at hand. The whole village seemed composed of a straggling row of one-storied grey stone houses, the same colour as the stone walls that separated the few fields enclosed from the surrounding waste, and as the little bridges over the beck that ran down one side of the grey wide street. Every thing was grey. The church, the low tower of which I could see at a little distance, seemed to have been built of the same stone; so was the parsonage when I came up to it, accompanied on my way by a mob of rough, uncouth children, who eyed me and Brian with half-defiant curiosity.

The clergyman was at home, and after a short delay I was admitted. Leaving Brian in charge of my drawing materials, I followed the servant into a low panelled room, in which, at a latticed window, a very old man was sitting. The morning light fell on his white head bent low over a litter of papers and books.

“Mr er—?” he said, looking up slowly, with one finger keeping his place in a book.

“Blake.”

“Blake,” he repeated after me, and was silent.

I told him that I was an architect; that I had come to study a fresco in the crypt of his church, and asked for the keys.

“The crypt,” he said, pushing up his spectacles and peering hard at me. “The crypt has been closed for thirty years. Ever since—” and he stopped short.

“I should be much obliged for the keys,” I said again.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No one goes in there now.”

“It is a pity,” I remarked, “for I have come a long way with that one object;” and I told him about the paper I had been asked to read, and the trouble I was taking with it.

He became interested. “Ah!” he said, laying down his pen, and removing his finger from the page before him, “I can understand that. I also was young once, and fired with ambition. The lines have fallen to me in somewhat lonely places, and for forty years I have held the cure of souls in this place, where, truly, I have seen but little of the world, though I myself may be not unknown in the paths of literature. Possibly you may have read a pamphlet, written by myself, on the Syrian version of the Three Authentic Epistles of Ignatius?”

“Sir,” I said, “I am ashamed to confess that I have not time to read even the most celebrated books. My one object in life is my art, you know.”

“You are right, my son,” said the old man, evidently disappointed, but looking at me kindly. “There are diversities of gifts, and if the Lord has entrusted you with a talent, look to it. Lay it not up in a napkin.”

I said I would not do so if he would lend me the keys of the crypt. He seemed startled by my recurrence to the subject and looked undecided.

“Why not?” he murmured to himself. “The youth appears a good youth. And superstition! What is it but distrust in God!”

He got up slowly, and taking a large bunch of keys out of his pocket, opened with one of them an oak cupboard in the corner of the room.

“They should be here,” he muttered, peering in; “but the dust of many years deceives the eye. See, my son, if among these parchments there be two keys; one of iron and very large, and the other steel, and of a long and thin appearance.”

I went eagerly to help him, and presently found in a back drawer two keys tied together, which he recognized at once.

“Those are they,” he said. “The long one opens the first door at the bottom of the steps which go down against the outside wall of the church hard by the sword graven in the wall. The second opens (but it is hard of opening and of shutting) the iron door within the passage leading to the crypt itself. My son, is it necessary to your treatise that you should enter this crypt?”

I replied that it was absolutely necessary.

“Then take them,” he said, “and in the evening you will bring them to me again.”

I said I might want to go several days running, and asked if he would not allow me to keep them till I had finished my work; but on that point he was firm.

“Likewise,” he added, “be careful that you lock the first door at the foot of the steps before you unlock the second, and lock the second also while you are within. Furthermore, when you come out lock the iron inner door as well as the wooden one.”

I promised I would do so, and, after thanking him, hurried away, delighted at my success in obtaining the keys. Finding Brian and my sketching materials waiting for me in the porch, I eluded the vigilance of my escort of children by taking the narrow private path between the parsonage and the church which was close at hand, standing in a quadrangle of ancient yews.

The church itself was interesting, and I noticed that it must have arisen out of the ruins of a previous building, judging from the number of fragments of stone caps and arches, bearing traces of very early carving, now built into the walls. There were incised crosses, too, in some places, and one especially caught my attention, being flanked by a large sword. It was in trying to get a nearer look at this that I stumbled, and, looking down, saw at my feet a flight of narrow stone steps green with moss and mildew. Evidently this was the entrance to the crypt. I at once descended the steps, taking care of my footing, for they were damp and slippery in the extreme. Brian accompanied me, as nothing would induce him to remain behind. By the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs, I found myself almost in darkness, and I had to strike a light before I could find the key hole and the proper key to fit into it. The door, which was of wood, opened inwards fairly easily, although an accumulation of mould and rubbish on the ground outside showed it had not been used for many years. Having got through it, which was not altogether an easy matter, as nothing would induce it to open more than about eighteen inches, I carefully locked it behind me, although I should have preferred to leave it open, as there is to some minds an unpleasant feeling in being locked in anywhere, in case of a sudden exit seeming advisable.

I kept my candle alight with some difficulty, and after groping my way down a low and of course exceedingly dank passage, came to an other door. A toad was squatting against it, who looked as if he had been sitting there about a hundred years. As I lowered the candle to the floor, he gazed at the light with unblinking eyes, and then retreated slowly into a crevice in the wall, leaving against the door a small cavity in the dry mud which had gradually silted up round his per son. I noticed that this door was of iron, and had a long bolt, which, however, was broken. With out delay, I fitted the second key into the lock, and pushing the door open after considerable difficulty, I felt the cold breath of the crypt upon my face. I must own I experienced a momentary regret at locking the second door again as soon as I was well inside, but I felt it my duty to do so. Then, leaving the key in the lock, I seized my candle and looked round. I was standing in a low vaulted chamber with groined roof, cut out of the solid rock. It was difficult to see where the crypt ended, as further light thrown on any point only showed other rough archways or openings, cut in the rock, which had probably served at one time for family vaults. A peculiarity of the Wet Waste crypt, which I had not noticed in other places of that description, was the tasteful arrangement of skulls and bones which were packed about four feet high on either side. The skulls were symmetrically built up to within a few inches of the top of the low archway on my left, and the shin bones were arranged in the same manner on my right. But the fresco! I looked round for it in vain. Perceiving at the further end of the crypt a very low and very massive archway, the entrance to which was not filled up with bones, I passed under it, and found myself in a second smaller chamber. Holding my candle above my head, the first object its light fell upon was – the fresco, and at a glance I saw that it was unique. Setting down some of my things with a trembling hand on a rough stone shelf hard by, which had evidently been a credence table, I examined the work more closely. It was a reredos over what had probably been the altar at the time the priests were proscribed. The fresco belonged to the earliest part of the fifteenth century, and was so perfectly preserved that I could almost trace the limits of each day’s work in the plaster, as the artist had dashed it on and smoothed it out with his trowel. The subject was the Ascension, gloriously treated. I can hardly describe my elation as I stood and looked at it, and reflected that this magnificent specimen of English fresco painting would be made known to the world by myself. Recollecting myself at last, I opened my sketching bag, and, lighting all the candles I had brought with me, set to work.

Brian walked about near me, and though I was not otherwise than glad of his company in my rather lonely position, I wished several times I had left him behind. He seemed restless, and even the sight of so many bones appeared to exercise no soothing effect upon him. At last, how ever, after repeated commands, he lay down, watchful but motionless, on the stone floor.

I must have worked for several hours, and I was pausing to rest my eyes and hands, when I noticed for the first time the intense stillness that surrounded me. No sound from me reached the outer world. The church clock which had clanged out so loud and ponderously as I went down the steps, had not since sent the faintest whisper of its iron tongue down to me below. All was silent as the grave. This was the grave. Those who had come here had indeed gone down into silence. I repeated the words to myself, or rather they repeated themselves to me.

Gone down into silence.

I was awakened from my reverie by a faint sound. I sat still and listened. Bats occasionally frequent vaults and underground places.

The sound continued, a faint, stealthy, rather unpleasant sound. I do not know what kinds of sounds bats make, whether pleasant or otherwise. Suddenly there was a noise as of something falling, a momentary pause – and then – an almost imperceptible but distinct jangle as of a key.

I had left the key in the lock after I had turned it, and I now regretted having done so. I got up, took one of the candles, and went back into the larger crypt – for though I trust I am not so effeminate as to be rendered nervous by hearing a noise for which I cannot instantly account; still, on occasions of this kind, I must honestly say I should prefer that they did not occur. As I came towards the iron door, there was another distinct (I had almost said hurried) sound. The impression on my mind was one of great haste. When I reached the door, and held the candle near the lock to take out the key, I perceived that the other one, which hung by a short string to its fellow, was vibrating slightly. I should have preferred not to find it vibrating, as there seemed no occasion for such a course; but I put them both into my pocket, and turned to go back to my work. As I turned, I saw on the ground what had occasioned the louder noise I had heard, namely, a skull which had evidently just slipped from its place on the top of one of the walls of bones, and had rolled almost to my feet. There, disclosing a few more inches of the top of an archway behind was the place from which it had been dislodged. I stooped to pick it up, but fearing to displace any more skulls by meddling with the pile, and not liking to gather up its scattered teeth, I let it lie, and went back to my work, in which I was soon so completely absorbed that I was only roused at last by my candles beginning to burn low and go out one after another.

Then, with a sigh of regret, for I had not nearly finished, I turned to go. Poor Brian, who had never quite reconciled himself to the place, was beside himself with delight. As I opened the iron door he pushed past me, and a moment later I heard him whining and scratching, and I had al most added, beating, against the wooden one. I locked the iron door, and hurried down the pas sage as quickly as I could, and almost before I had got the other one ajar there seemed to be a rush past me into the open air, and Brian was bounding up the steps and out of sight. As I stopped to take out the key, I felt quite deserted and left be hind. When I came out once more into the sun light, there was a vague sensation all about me in the air of exultant freedom.

It was already late in the afternoon, and after I had sauntered back to the parsonage to give up the keys, I persuaded the people of the public-house to let me join in the family meal, which was spread out in the kitchen. The inhabitants of Wet Waste were primitive people, with the frank, unabashed manner that flourishes still in lonely places, especially in the wilds of Yorkshire; but I had no idea that in these days of penny posts and cheap newspapers such entire ignorance of the outer world could have existed in any corner, however remote, of Great Britain.

When I took one of the neighbour’s children on my knee – a pretty little girl with the palest aureole of flaxen hair I had ever seen – and began to draw pictures for her of the birds and beasts of other countries, I was instantly surrounded by a crowd of children, and even grown-up people, while others came to their doorways and looked on from a distance, calling to each other in the strident unknown tongue which I have since discovered goes by the name of “Broad Yorkshire.” The following morning, as I came out of my room, I perceived that something was amiss in the village. A buzz of voices reached me as I passed the bar, and in the next house I could hear through the open window a high-pitched wail of lamentation.

The woman who brought me my breakfast was in tears, and in answer to my questions, told me that the neighbour’s child, the little girl whom I had taken on my knee the evening before, had died in the night.

I felt sorry for the general grief that the little creature’s death seemed to arouse, and the uncontrolled wailing of the poor mother took my appetite away.

I hurried off early to my work, calling on my way for the keys, and with Brian for my companion descended once more into the crypt, and drew and measured with an absorption that gave me no time that day to listen for sounds real or fancied. Brian, too, on this occasion seemed quite content, and slept peacefully beside me on the stone floor. When I had worked as long as I could, I put away my books with regret that even then I had not quite finished, as I had hoped to do. It would be necessary to come again for a short time on the morrow. When I returned the keys late that afternoon, the old clergyman met me at the door, and asked me to come in and have tea with him.

“And has the work prospered?” he asked, as we sat down in the long, low room, into which I had just been ushered, and where he seemed to live entirely.

I told him it had, and showed it to him.

“You have seen the original, of course?” I said.

“Once,” he replied, gazing fixedly at it. He evidently did not care to be communicative, so I turned the conversation to the age of the church.

“All here is old,” he said. “When I was young, forty years ago, and came here because I had no means of mine own, and was much moved to marry at that time, I felt oppressed that all was so old; and that this place was so far removed from the world, for which I had at times longings grievous to be borne; but I had chosen my lot, and with it I was forced to be content. My son, marry not in youth, for love, which truly in that season is a mighty power, turns away the heart from study, and young children break the back of ambition. Neither marry in middle life, when a woman is seen to be but a woman and her talk a weariness, so you will not be burdened with a wife in your old age.”

I had my own views on the subject of marriage, for I am of opinion that a well-chosen, companion of domestic tastes and docile and devoted temperament may be of material assistance to a professional man. But, my opinions once formulated, it is not of moment to me to discuss them with others, so I changed the subject, and asked if the neighbouring villages were as antiquated as Wet Waste.

“Yes, all about here is old,” he repeated. “The paved road leading to Dyke Fens is an ancient pack road, made even in the time of the Romans. Dyke Fens, which is very near here, a matter of but four or five miles, is likewise old, and forgotten by the world. The Reformation never reached it. It stopped here. And at Dyke Fens they still have a priest and a bell, and bow down before the saints. It is a damnable heresy, and weekly I expound it as such to my people, showing them true doctrines; and I have heard that this same priest has so far yielded himself to the Evil One that he has preached against me as withholding gospel truths from my flock; but I take no heed of it, neither of his pamphlet touching the Clementine Homilies, in which he vainly contradicts that which I have plainly set forth and proven beyond doubt, concerning the word Asaph.”

The old man was fairly off on his favourite subject, and it was some time before I could get away. As it was, he followed me to the door, and I only escaped because the old clerk hobbled up at that moment, and claimed his attention.

The following morning I went for the keys for the third and last time. I had decided to leave early the next day. I was tired of Wet Waste, and a certain gloom seemed to my fancy to be gathering over the place. There was a sensation of trouble in the air, as if, although the day was bright and clear, a storm were coming.

This morning, to my astonishment, the keys were refused to me when I asked for them. I did not, however, take the refusal as final – I make it a rule never to take a refusal as final – and after a short delay I was shown into the room where, as usual, the clergyman was sitting, or rather, on this occasion, was walking up and down.

“My son,” he said with vehemence, “I know wherefore you have come, but it is of no avail. I cannot lend the keys again.”

I replied that, on the contrary, I hoped he would give them to me at once.

“It is impossible,” he repeated. “I did wrong, exceeding wrong. I will never part with them again.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated, and then said slowly:

“The old clerk, Abraham Kelly, died last night.” He paused, and then went on: “The doc tor has just been here to tell me of that which is a mystery to him. I do not wish the people of the place to know it, and only to me he has mentioned it, but he has discovered plainly on the throat of the old man, and also, but more faintly on the child’s, marks as of strangulation. None but he has observed it, and he is at a loss how to account for it. I, alas! can account for it but in one way, but in one way!”

I did not see what all this had to do with the crypt, but to humour the old man, I asked what that way was.

“It is a long story, and, haply, to a stranger it may appear but foolishness, but I will even tell it; for I perceive that unless I furnish a reason for withholding the keys, you will not cease to entreat me for them.

“I told you at first when you inquired of me concerning the crypt, that it had been closed these thirty years, and so it was. Thirty years ago a certain Sir Roger Despard departed this life, even the Lord of the manor of Wet Waste and Dyke Fens, the last of his family, which is now, thank the Lord, extinct. He was a man of a vile life, neither fearing God nor regarding man, nor having compassion on innocence, and the Lord appeared to have given him over to the tormentors even in this world, for he suffered many things of his vices, more especially from drunkenness, in which seasons, and they were many, he was as one possessed by seven devils, being an abomination to his household and a root of bitterness to all, both high and low.

“And, at last, the cup of his iniquity being full to the brim, he came to die, and I went to exhort him on his death-bed; for I heard that terror had come upon him, and that evil imaginations encompassed him so thick on every side, that few of them that were with him could abide in his presence. But when I saw him I perceived that there was no place of repentance left for him, and he scoffed at me and my superstition, even as he lay dying, and swore there was no God and no angel, and all were damned even as he was. And the next day, towards evening, the pains of death came upon him, and he raved the more exceedingly, inasmuch as he said he was being strangled by the Evil One. Now on his table was his hunting knife, and with his last strength he crept and laid hold upon it, no man withstanding him, and swore a great oath that if he went down to burn in hell, he would leave one of his hands behind on earth, and that it would never rest until it had drawn blood from the throat of another and strangled him, even as he himself was being strangled. And he cut off his own right hand at the wrist, and no man dared go near him to stop him, and the blood went through the floor, even down to the ceiling of the room below, and there upon he died.

“And they called me in the night, and told me of his oath, and I counselled that no man should speak of it, and I took the dead hand, which none had ventured to touch, and I laid it beside him in his coffin; for I thought it better he should take it with him, so that he might have it, if haply some day after much tribulation he should perchance be moved to stretch forth his hands towards God. But the story got spread about, and the people were affrighted, so, when he came to be buried in the place of his fathers, he being the last of his family, and the crypt likewise full, I had it closed, and kept the keys myself, and suffered no man to enter therein any more; for truly he was a man of an evil life, and the devil is not yet wholly over come, nor cast chained into the lake of fire. So in time the story died out, for in thirty years much is forgotten. And when you came and asked me for the keys, I was at the first minded to withhold them; but I thought it was a vain superstition, and I perceived that you do but ask a second time for what is first refused; so I let you have them, seeing it was not an idle curiosity, but a desire to improve the talent committed to you, that led you to require them.”

The old man stopped, and I remained silent, wondering what would be the best way to get them just once more.

“Surely, sir,” I said at last, “one so cultivated and deeply read as yourself cannot be biased by an idle superstition.”

“I trust not,” he replied, “and yet – it is a strange thing that since the crypt was opened two people have died, and the mark is plain upon the throat of the old man and visible on the young child. No blood was drawn, but the second time the grip was stronger than the first. The third time, perchance—”

“Superstition such as that,” I said with authority, “is an entire want of faith in God. You once said so yourself.”

I took a high moral tone which is often efficacious with conscientious, humble-minded people.

He agreed, and accused himself of not having faith as a grain of mustard seed; but even when I had got him so far as that, I had a severe struggle for the keys. It was only when I finally explained to him that if any malign influence had been let loose the first day, at any rate, it was out now for good or evil, and no further going or coming of mine could make any difference, that I finally gained my point. I was young, and he was old; and, being much shaken by what had occurred, he gave way at last, and I wrested the keys from him.

I will not deny that I went down the steps that day with a vague, indefinable repugnance, which was only accentuated by the closing of the two doors behind me. I remembered then, for the first time, the faint jangling of the key and other sounds which I had noticed the first day, and how one of the skulls had fallen. I went to the place where it still lay. I have already said these walls of skulls were built up so high as to be within a few inches of the top of the low archways that led into more distant portions of the vault. The dis placement of the skull in question had left a small hole just large enough for me to put my hand through. I noticed for the first time, over the archway above it, a carved coat-of-arms, and the name, now almost obliterated, of Despard. This, no doubt, was the Despard vault. I could not resist moving a few more skulls and looking in, holding my candle as near the aperture as I could. The vault was full. Piled high, one upon an other, were old coffins, and remnants of coffins, and strewn bones. I attribute my present determination to be cremated to the painful impression produced on me by this spectacle. The coffin nearest the archway alone was intact, save for a large crack across the lid. I could not get a ray from my candle to fall on the brass plates, but I felt no doubt this was the coffin of the wicked Sir Roger. I put back the skulls, including the one which had rolled down, and carefully finished my work. I was not there much more than an hour, but I was glad to get away.

If I could have left Wet Waste at once I should have done so, for I had a totally unreasonable longing to leave the place; but I found that only one train stopped during the day at the station from which I had come, and that it would not be possible to be in time for it that day.

Accordingly I submitted to the inevitable, and wandered about with Brian for the remainder of the afternoon and until late in the evening, sketching and smoking. The day was oppressively hot, and even after the sun had set across the burnt stretches of the wolds, it seemed to grow very little cooler. Not a breath stirred. In the evening, when I was tired of loitering in the lanes, I went up to my own room, and after contemplating afresh my finished study of the fresco, I suddenly set to work to write the part of my paper bearing upon it. As a rule, I write with difficulty, but that evening words came to me with winged speed, and with them a hovering impression that I must make haste, that I was much pressed for time. I wrote and wrote, until my candles guttered out and left me trying to finish by the moon light, which, until I endeavoured to write by it, seemed as clear as day.

I had to put away my MS., and, feeling it was too early to go to bed, for the church clock was just counting out ten, I sat down by the open window and leaned out to try and catch a breath of air. It was a night of exceptional beauty; and as I looked out my nervous haste and hurry of mind were allayed. The moon, a perfect circle, was – if so poetic an expression be permissible – as it were, sailing across a calm sky. Every detail of the little village was as clearly illuminated by its beams as if it were broad day; so, also, was the adjacent church with its primeval yews, while even the wolds beyond were dimly indicated, as if through tracing paper.

I sat a long time leaning against the window sill. The heat was still intense. I am not, as a rule, easily elated or readily cast down; but as I sat that night in the lonely village on the moors, with Brian’s head against my knee, how, or why, I know not, a great depression gradually came upon me.

My mind went back to the crypt and the count less dead who had been laid there. The sight of the goal to which all human life, and strength, and beauty, travel in the end, had not affected me at the time, but now the very air about me seemed heavy with death.

What was the good, I asked myself, of working and toiling, and grinding down my heart and youth in the mill of long and strenuous effort, seeing that in the grave folly and talent, idleness and labour lie together, and are alike forgotten? Labour seemed to stretch before me till my heart ached to think of it, to stretch before me even to the end of life, and then came, as the recompense of my labour – the grave. Even if I succeeded, if, after wearing my life threadbare with toil, I succeeded, what remained to me in the end? The grave. A little sooner, while the hands and eyes were still strong to labour, or a little later, when all power and vision had been taken from them; sooner or later only – the grave.

I do not apologise for the excessively morbid tenor of these reflections, as I hold that they were caused by the lunar effects which I have endeavoured to transcribe. The moon in its various quarterings has always exerted a marked influence on what I may call the sub-dominant, namely, the poetic side of my nature.

I roused myself at last, when the moon came to look in upon me where I sat, and, leaving the windows open, I pulled myself together and went to bed.

I fell asleep almost immediately, but I do not fancy I could have been asleep very long when I was wakened by Brian. He was growling in a low, muffled tone, as he sometimes did in his sleep, when his nose was buried in his rug. I called out to him to shut up; and as he did not do so, turned in bed to find my match box or something to throw at him. The moonlight was still in the room, and as I looked at him I saw him raise his head and evidently wake up. I admonished him, and was just on the point of falling asleep when he began to growl again in a low, savage manner that waked me most effectually. Presently he shook himself and got up, and began prowling about the room. I sat up in bed and called to him, but he paid no attention. Suddenly I saw him stop short in the moonlight; he showed his teeth, and crouched down, his eyes following something in the air. I looked at him in horror. Was he going mad? His eyes were glaring, and his head moved slightly as if he were following the rapid movements of an enemy. Then, with a furious snarl, he suddenly sprang from the ground, and rushed in great leaps across the room towards me, dashing himself against the furniture, his eyes rolling, snatching and tearing wildly in the air with his teeth. I saw he had gone mad. I leaped out of bed, and rushing at him, caught him by the throat. The moon had gone behind a cloud; but in the darkness I felt him turn upon me, felt him rise up, and his teeth close in my throat. I was being strangled. With all the strength of despair, I kept my grip of his neck, and, dragging him across the room, tried to crush in his head against the iron rail of my bedstead. It was my only chance. I felt the blood running down my neck. I was suffocating. After one moment of frightful struggle, I beat his head against the bar and heard his skull give way. I felt him give one strong shudder, a groan, and then I fainted away.

•   •   •   •   •

When I came to myself I was lying on the floor, surrounded by the people of the house, my reddened hands still clutching Brian’s throat. Some one was holding a candle towards me, and the draft from the window made it flare and waver. I looked at Brian. He was stone dead. The blood from his battered head was trickling slowly over my hands. His great jaw was fixed in something that – in the uncertain light – I could not see.

They turned the light a little.

“Oh, God!” I shrieked. “There! Look! look!”

“He’s off his head,” said someone, and I fainted again.

•   •   •   •   •

I was ill for about a fortnight without regaining consciousness, a waste of time of which even now I cannot think without poignant regret. When I did recover consciousness, I found I was being carefully nursed by the old clergyman and the people of the house. I have often heard the unkindness of the world in general inveighed against, but for my part I can honestly say that I have received many more kindnesses than I have time to repay. Country people especially are remarkably attentive to strangers in illness.

I could not rest until I had seen the doctor who attended me, and had received his assurance that I should be equal to reading my paper on the appointed day. This pressing anxiety removed, I told him of what I had seen before I fainted the second time. He listened attentively, and then assured me, in a manner that was intended to be soothing, that I was suffering from an hallucination, due, no doubt, to the shock of my dog’s sudden madness.

“Did you see the dog after it was dead?” I asked.

He said he did. The whole jaw was covered with blood and foam; the teeth certainly seemed convulsively fixed, but the case being evidently one of extraordinarily virulent hydrophobia, owing to the intense heat, he had had the body buried immediately.

•   •   •   •   •

My companion stopped speaking as we reached our lodgings, and went upstairs. Then, lighting a candle, he slowly turned down his collar.

“You see I have the marks still,” he said, “but I have no fear of dying of hydrophobia. I am told such peculiar scars could not have been made by the teeth of a dog. If you look closely you see the pressure of the five fingers. That is the reason why I wear high collars.”

THE MYSTERY
OF THE SEMI-DETACHED

Edith Nesbit

1893

He was waiting for her; he had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other – and far away to the south-west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lamp-posts, but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same; and farther up, towards the cemetery, it was really quite rural, and almost pretty, especially in twilight. But twilight had long deepened into night, and still he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with the complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted. And this half-clandestine meeting was tonight to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview – because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house, and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle, who might “go off” any day, a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him.

So he waited for her, and the chill of an unusually severe May evening entered into his bones.

The policeman passed him with but a surly response to his “Good night.” The bicyclists went by him like grey ghosts with fog-horns; and it was nearly ten o’clock, and she had not come.

He shrugged his shoulders and turned towards his lodgings. His road led him by her house – desirable, commodious, semi-detached – and he walked slowly as he neared it. She might, even now, be coming out. But she was not. There was no sign of movement about the house, no sign of life, no lights even in the windows. And her people were not early people.

He paused by the gate, wondering.

Then he noticed that the front door was open – wide open – and the street lamp shone a little way into the dark hall. There was something about all this that did not please him – that scared him a little, indeed. The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich uncle. The old man must have left early. In which case—

He walked up the path of patent-glazed tiles, and listened. No sign of life. He passed into the hall. There was no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why was the front door open? There was no one in the drawing-room, the dining-room and the study (nine feet by seven) were equally blank. Everyone was out, evidently. But the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went away and closed it after him. So he went upstairs, and at the door of the first bedroom he came to he struck a wax match, as he had done in the sitting-rooms. Even as he did so he felt that he was not alone. And he was prepared to see something; but for what he saw he was not prepared. For what he saw lay on the bed, in a white loose gown – and it was his sweetheart, and its throat was cut from ear to ear. He doesn’t know what happened then, nor how he got downstairs and into the street; but he got out somehow, and the policeman found him in a fit, under the lamp-post at the corner of the street. He couldn’t speak when they picked him up, and he passed the night in the police-cells, because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before, but never one in a fit.

The next morning he was better, though still very white and shaky. But the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house.

There was no crowd about it as he had fancied there would be, and the blinds were not down.

As he stood, dazed, in front of the door, it opened, and she came out.

He held on to the door-post for support.

“She’s all right, you see,” said the constable, who had found him under the lamp. “I told you you was drunk, but you would know best—”

When he was alone with her he told her – not all – for that would not bear telling – but how he had come into the commodious semi-detached, and how he had found the door open and the lights out, and that he had been into that long back room facing the stairs, and had seen something – in even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have brandy given him.

“But, my dearest,” she said, “I dare say the house was dark, for we were all at the Crystal Palace with my uncle, and no doubt the door was open, for the maids will run out if they’re left. But you could not have been in that room, because I locked it when I came away, and the key was in my pocket. I dressed in a hurry and I left all my odds and ends lying about.”

“I know,” he said; “I saw a green scarf on a chair, and some long brown gloves, and a lot of hairpins and ribbons, and a prayer-book, and a lace handkerchief on the dressing-table. Why, I even noticed the almanac on the mantelpiece – October 21. At least it couldn’t be that, because this is May. And yet it was. Your almanac is at October 21, isn’t it?”

“No, of course it isn’t,” she said, smiling rather anxiously; “but all the other things were just as you say. You must have had a dream, or a vision, or something.”

He was a very ordinary, commonplace, City young man, and he didn’t believe in visions, but he never rested day or night till he got his sweetheart and her mother away from that commodious semi-detached, and settled them in a quite distant suburb. In the course of the removal he incidentally married her, and the mother went on living with them.

His nerves must have been a good bit shaken, because he was very queer for a long time, and was always inquiring if anyone had taken the desirable semi-detached; and when an old stockbroker with a family took it, he went the length of calling on the old gentleman and imploring him by all that he held dear, not to live in that fatal house.

“Why?” said the stockbroker, not unnaturally.

And then he got so vague and confused, between trying to tell why and trying not to tell why, that the stockbroker showed him out, and thanked his God he was not such a fool as to allow a lunatic to stand in the way of his taking that really remarkably cheap and desirable semi-detached residence.

Now the curious and quite inexplicable part of this story is that when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the 22nd of October she found him looking like death, with the morning paper in his hand. He caught hers – he couldn’t speak, and pointed to the paper. And there she read that on the night of the 21st a young lady, the stockbroker’s daughter, had been found, with her throat cut from ear to ear, on the bed in the long back bedroom facing the stairs of that desirable semi-detached.

THE MYSTIC SPELL

A Weird Story of Brazil
TOLD BY SIGNOR DON ALONZO RODERICK,
SPANISH CONSUL AT RIO DE JANEIRO

Dick Donovan

1899

Rio and its neighbourhood is perhaps one of the most beautiful spots on the face of the globe. Indeed, I am not sure but what it may claim to be absolutely without a rival, for it has features that are unique. Nature would almost seem to have exhausted her efforts to build up a scene which lacks no single detail necessary for imposing pictorial effect, though, as most people know, hidden beneath all this entrancing beauty death lurks in a hundred forms; and he who is not wary and ever on his guard is liable to be struck down with appalling suddenness.

My predecessor had suffered much in his health, and succumbed at last to the scourge of yellow fever. When I arrived to take up his work I found everything in such confusion that I had to labour very hard to reduce chaos to order and put the consular business shipshape. It thus came about that for many months I was unable to leave my post in Rio, and as a consequence my health began to suffer. Soon after my arrival I made the acquaintance of a Portuguese gentleman named Azevedo Souza, a merchant of high standing in Rio. His business was of a very mixed character, and amongst other things he was an orchid exporter. In this branch of his trading he had been exceptionally successful. Through his instrumentality collectors had had brought under their notice some wonderful and hitherto unknown specimens of these marvels of nature. His collecting station was far up north in the interior. He spoke of it enthusiastically as an earthly paradise, and gave me many pressing invitations to be his guest, when he paid his periodical visits to look after his affairs in that region.

Senhor Souza was an estimable gentleman, and very highly respected. He had a charming family, amongst them being a daughter, Juliette by name, and one of the sweetest young ladies I have ever had the pleasure of associating with. At this period Juliette was about seven-and-twenty, and as the apple of his eye to her father. She was invaluable to him in his business, at any rate to the orchid branch of it; for not only had she an all-round cleverness, but probably she knew more about orchids than any living woman. She herself was the means of introducing to the scientific world an entirely new orchid, the flower of which was of such transcendent beauty that the Brazilians, used as they are to floral glories, said that this particular bloom must have been “specially cultivated in God’s own garden.” Juliette made a most arduous and hazardous journey into the depths of virgin forests in search of this plant, and narrowly escaped losing her life.

Perhaps, when I say that I was a bachelor the reader will readily guess that my acquaintance with Juliette aroused in me an admiration which I devoutly hoped would find its consummation in a happy union, for she was by no means indifferent to my attentions. Not only was she highly cultivated, but had astonishing linguistic powers, and spoke many languages fluently. She was perfectly acquainted with Spanish, and had read the beautiful literature of Spain extensively. Senhor Souza encouraged my suit, and at last the time came when I was emboldened to tell Juliette she was the one woman in the world who could make me happy. Ah, I shall never forget that night until the grave closes over me. We were seated in the veranda of Senhor Souza’s splendid villa, situated just on the outskirts of the town, and commanding an enchanting view of the bay of Rio, with its remarkable Sugar Loaf Mountain and the marvellous range beyond it. And what a night it was! The glory of the stars, shining as they can only shine in the tropics; the sparkling moonlit sea; the soft, flower-perfumed breeze that stirred the foliage to a languorous susurrus; the fireflies that like living jewels filled the air, begot in one a feeling of reverence, and strengthened one’s faith in the Great God who created such a world of beauty. Those who have never experienced such a night under a tropical sky know nothing of what the true poetry of nature means. It stirs one with a ravishing, ecstatic feeling of delight which is a foretaste of the joys of heaven.

I had been sitting for some time with Juliette’s hand in mine. We were silent, being deeply impressed with the magical beauty of the night, for we both had poetical instincts; indeed, Juliette’s was a highly strung romantic temperament, and she was able to express her thoughts in language that could stir the pulses and move to tears.

But this night of all nights was a night for love, and as I pressed her hand I asked her to crown my happiness by becoming my wife. To my astonishment she shuddered, sighed deeply, and then in a tone of the most touching pathos exclaimed:

“Oh, why—oh, why have you asked me that?”

“Juliette,” I answered in amazement, “is it not a natural question for a man to ask a woman sooner or later, when every beat of his heart tells him that he loves her?”

“Yes, yes,” she replied in distressful tones, and shuddering again violently, “but—”

“But what?” I asked as she paused.

“I pray you press me not for an answer.”

“This is extraordinary!” I remarked, feeling distressed beyond the power of words to express; and yet, distressed as I was, she was infinitely more troubled; she sobbed like one whose heart was rent. “You know that I love you, Juliette,” I went on. “You have encouraged me. You have tacitly bidden me to hope; and now—”

“Oh, yes, yes,” she cried with a catching of her breath, and a spasmodic closing of her fingers round mine. “And I love you, I love you. But I have been living in a fool’s paradise. I have been dreaming dreams. I thought that the sweet delicious time would go on indefinitely. You waken me now abruptly, and I no longer dream. I must not, cannot be your wife.”

“Juliette, what is this mystery?” I exclaimed, growing excited, for I was sure some extraordinary influence was at work, and that she was under a spell.

She laughed, though it wasn’t the light laugh of joy peculiar to her, but a little forced spasmodic laugh of bitterness and despair.

“I will tell you,” she answered, trying to master her emotions by a mighty effort of will. “It is better that you should know, otherwise you may deem me fickle, and think that I have trifled with your feelings. Years ago, when I was a little girl, I had a nurse, a strange old Brazilian crone who had been in the family service for many years. She was very fond of all my brothers and sisters, but for some reason I could never understand took a strong dislike to me. I think this dislike was mutual, for I remember that she used to make me shudder at times, and fill me with a nameless dread. This, perhaps, was hardly to be wondered at, for she treated me roughly and unkindly, and many a time I complained to my father. He, however, shared my mother’s belief in the old woman’s fidelity and gentleness, and would chide me for what he termed my unfounded, childish fears. Consequently I ceased to complain, and kept my little sorrows to myself.

“The name of this old nurse was Joanna Maria. One day she and I and an elder sister who was about two years my senior had been down to the bay, and wandering about the sea-shore in search of the beautiful shells which are often thrown up after a storm. Old Joanna was peculiarly irritable and fretful that morning. Once, when I stumbled over a rock and fell into a pool of sea-water, she snatched me up fiercely, and shook me until nearly all the life was frightened out of me. Then she sat down, made me sit beside her, and, looking at me fixedly with her bleared eyes, said:

“ ‘I am going to tell you your future. It grows dark, very dark; a foreigner will come from over the sea and will talk love to you, but if you listen to him and become his wife, a sudden and awful death will overtake you; you will leave him a widow while yet he is a bridegroom. Love and wifedom are not for you. I put a curse upon you.’ ”

In spite of the fact that dear Juliette told me this with moving solemnity and gravity, I burst into laughter, and taking her in my arms said:

“Juliette, my beloved, what nonsense all this is! Surely you with your high intelligence and great learning, do not attach the slightest importance to the malicious and spiteful utterances of an ignorant old crone. No, no, I am sure you don’t. You are too sensible. Put these phantom fears away, darling, and trust to my great love to shield you from all harm. Say you love me; say you will be my bride. Do not send me from you on this wonderful night of beauty with a great load of sorrow at my heart. Speak, Juliette, my love, my life—comfort me. Tell me you will link your fate with mine.”

She sighed in response to my appeal. Then pressing her soft, fair cheek against mine, she tightened her arms around my neck and murmured low and sweetly:

“Yes, beloved, you are right. I will put the foolish, superstitious fear behind me. Old Joanna has long been dead, and I ought never to have allowed her empty, spiteful words to have influenced me. Take me, dear, when you will. I am yours only. I will be your wife! I will be faithful unto death!”

Scarcely had she uttered the words when she broke from me, and uttering a shrill scream of terror, sank into her chair, and, pointing to the far end of the veranda like one distraught, cried:

“There she is, there she is! Take her away, take her away, for I am horrified!”

Naturally my eyes turned to where she pointed, and though I was neither a nervous nor a superstitious man, I started with a feeling of horror, for I beheld the shadowy form of an old negress. The moonlight fell full upon her repulsive face, which was filled with a look of hatred, while her eyes, glowing like a wild cat’s, glared at me with a spite that would be difficult to describe. In a few moments her lips parted, revealing the white teeth that glistened in the pale light, and distinctly and unmistakably I heard these words: “Shun her, the curse is on her! She will die as I foretold.”

Juliette heard this too, and with a pitiable scream of fright she fell in a swoon on the floor. The scream brought the servants and her father rushing from the house, and as they raised the prostrate lady up, they directed angry glances at me, as though they thought that I had done some wrong.

I was confused and trembling. I glanced towards the end of the veranda to where I had seen the vision, but there was nothing in sight, and I was recalled to my senses by the voice of Senhor Souza, who somewhat peremptorily demanded to know what had caused his daughter’s illness.

“Senhor Souza,” I answered, thinking it was better to be perfectly frank with him, “as you know, Juliette and I love each other. To-night I have asked her to be my wife. She consented. Immediately afterwards we heard a sigh, and turning beheld a vision which so alarmed your daughter that she screamed and fainted.”

“This is a strange story, very strange,” he muttered; “and it is ominous. Tell me more about it?” The Brazilians are all more or less superstitious, and Senhor Souza was no exception. Having seen his daughter borne into the house and attended to by her maid and the female servants, he returned to me and made me relate minutely all that had passed.

As I felt that I ought not to conceal anything I gave him a plain, straightforward statement of the facts. He was much impressed and evidently uneasy. Again and again he asked me if I had seen the vision. Of course I had no alternative but to assure him that I could not have been mistaken, although I had no explanation to offer. I told him I was not given to seeing visions, that up to that night I had always been very sceptical; but now I was either a victim of a trick of the brain or I had seen what I had described. Moreover, I was certain, I said, that Juliette had seen it too. Otherwise, why did she scream and faint?

Senhor Souza showed decided reluctance to discuss the subject further that night, for he was evidently deeply affected, and much concerned about his daughter. So when I had been assured that Juliette was recovering, and would probably be all right in the morning, I returned to the town. As I drove along in the moonlight, I recalled all that had transpired, and I confess to a feeling of decided uneasiness. The fact is, I was unnerved a little. I had received a shock and its effects were not easily shaken off.

I did not sleep very well that night, but with the coming day my fears dispelled, and I quite recovered my wonted buoyancy when a special messenger brought me a little note from my Juliette to say that she was much better. That cheered me, and I was inclined to rate myself for having been so weak. But, of course, we are always brave in the day. Darkness makes cowards of us.

As soon as my duties permitted I rode out to Senhor Souza’s villa and was pleased at being met on the threshold by Juliette. She looked pale and anxious, and a trace of fear still lingered in her beautiful eyes. We wandered into the garden together, and when the psychological moment had arrived, as I thought, I renewed my love-vows, and again urged her to consent to become my wife. Something of the previous night’s agitation affected her, and as she clung to my arm as though she was afraid an unseen force might attempt to pluck her from my side, she said:

“Are we justified, think you, in defying fate, and in linking our lives together in spite of the curse?”

“Yes, undoubtedly,” I answered. “The curse is nonsense. We can afford to laugh at the curse of a human being.”

“You saw the vision last night?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And heard it speak?”

“I did.”

“You know then that I am not the victim of a delusion. At least, if I am so are you.”

“Beloved,” I cried, “we are both victims of a delusion. It is well that we should think so. Curses avail not, neither can the dead harm us. Our happiness is in each other’s keeping. Why should we throw it away? Surely we are strong-minded enough to be indifferent to the meaningless croakings of a spiteful and imbecile old woman. Hesitate, therefore, no longer; say you will be my wife.”

Although my argument evidently told with her, she could not quite make up her mind, and she murmured like one who was still under the influence of a great fear:

“I should like to, I should like to, dear one; but supposing that dreadful prophecy should come true?”

“It won’t, my own love,” I answered. “We have nothing to fear from the living, and the dead—well, the dead are done with.”

“Ah, you don’t know. Perhaps, perhaps not. Who knows, who can tell? It may be that those who have passed away may still have power to injure us. The old nurse hated me, and I fear that she has carried her hate beyond the grave.”

I used every argument I could to comfort and calm her. I urged her again and again to speak the word that would make my happiness complete. I told her that I was then suffering in health as a result of the climate, and weakened as I was, her refusal to comply with my request would probably have a fatal effect.

This latter argument appealed so forcibly to her that even her superstitious fears were overcome, and she said at last that if her father offered no objection she would not. Speaking for myself, although the night previous I had been much impressed, I was no longer so; nor was I inclined to attach any importance to the supernatural incident which had so alarmed us, consequently I felt perfectly justified in leaving nothing undone to overcome Juliette’s scruples and fears. And now, as I had gained her consent, I suggested that we should go at once to her father and get his sanction, for the time had come when the state of my health demanded imperatively that I should seek a change; that I should go away into the highlands to recoup. But I was resolved not to go alone.

By this time I had completely won her, and so we went to Senhor Souza and told him of our wishes and desires. I noticed that his olive cheeks blanched a little, and a look of ineffable love and tenderness filled his eyes as he gazed on his child, whose beauty at that moment seemed to me the beauty of heaven, not of earth. The Senhor appealed to her to speak her mind freely and candidly, holding nothing in reserve. So she turned to me, and laid both her soft white hands in mine, saying:

“Father, this man has my heart. My body, therefore, belongs to him. Give me to him with your blessing, for I love him.”

The Senhor was deeply affected, and his voice was broken by emotion as he spoke. He stepped towards us and placed one hand on my head and the other on hers, and looking at me with misty eyes, said:

“I give her to you; take her. Guard her, watch over her, for she is my life; she is the core of my heart, the apple of my eye. Be good to each other, be true, loyal, and upright; and may God in His infinite mercy and wisdom bless and prosper you, and give you long years of peace, joy, and contentment. God bless you, God bless you,” he repeated with great fervency.

The old man ceased. He could say no more, emotion choked him. Juliette and I muttered a fervent “Amen, amen!” and then we were alone; the Senhor had hurried from the room. I took my affianced wife in my arms, and kissing her passionately, told her that every dark cloud had gone. She sighed a sigh of joy, and nestled to me; but instantly the joy was turned to a cry of horror and alarm, for a mocking, bitter, fiendish laugh broke on our ears, and turning from whence the sound came, we saw a nebulous form defined against a background of velvet curtain that hung as a portière before a door. It was impossible to recognise the figure, and it faded in a few moments like a passing shadow. The laugh, however, was unmistakable. We both heard it. It struck against our hearts; it beat in on our brains.

“My love, my love!” I whispered in Juliette’s ear, as she seemed as if she would swoon in my arms; “be strong, be brave. God will smile upon us. The saints will watch over us.”

“Ah, dear one,” she exclaimed; “let me go from you for ever, for it is destined I shall bring you woe and lifelong sorrow.”

“Juliette, not all the fiends in the nether world shall part me from you,” I answered firmly. “We are pledged to each other, and your father has blessed us. We will have no fear, but go on our way with light hearts, and put our trust in God.”

She seemed comforted, and I remained there until late. The morrow was to see the commencement of the preparation for our nuptials.

During the ensuing weeks Juliette quite recovered her spirits. Or, at any rate, whatever her feelings and thoughts were, she was at pains to conceal them. It was arranged that our honeymoon was to be spent in the highlands, at the Senhor’s orchid station. I was looking forward to the time of my departure from Rio with intense joy, as I was terribly enervated, and yearned to breathe the pure and bracing air of the mountain lands.

At length our marriage morning came, as bright and brilliant a day as ever broke on the fair earth. A few fleecy clouds flecked the deep blue sky, and a fresh wind blowing in from the sea tempered the great heat of the sun. Surely no woman ever looked more divinely beautiful than did my sweet wife on that her bridal morn. It seemed to me that she was touched with a spiritual beauty that was not of the earth. The pure white lilies that lay upon her heaving bosom were not more wondrous fair than she. When the ceremony had ended, she expressed a wish to retire with me to a little chapel. There for a brief space we might offer up silent prayer, and commune with our hearts. Devoutly did she cross herself, and fervently did she pray that she might make me happy.

Ah, sweet Juliette, as I think, even at this far-off time, of that morning, my heart turns to lead, and my brain would give way, were it not that your sweet and gentle spirit is ever near me, and bids me be of good cheer.

When we had done justice to the sumptuous repast provided for us by my father-in-law at the principal Rio hotel, we left by the railway known as the Estrada de Ferro Dom Pedro, and travelled for many hours to the extreme northern limit of the line, a place called Carandahy. My father-in-law was to follow us in a few days. He would have started with us, but was compelled to remain behind to settle up certain business matters. My love and I remained that night at Carandahy, at the house of Senhor Oliveira, a great friend of my wife’s father, who had kindly placed his house at our disposal.

We spent three days in that bracing mountain station, where every breath I drew seemed to put new life into my enervated frame. And my dear wife had now quite recovered her spirits, and was as blithe and happy as a lark. Every one was so kind; the scenery was so wonderful; the air so invigorating, and we twain were so perfectly happy that we felt a thankfulness which could find no expression in mere words. But there is a dumb eloquence which is greater than speech; and there are moments of ecstasy when one can only express one’s feelings by silence. Such moments were those we passed at the mountain station of Carandahy. The joy was great; alas! too great to last, as was soon to be proved.

As our destination was Paraúna, on the banks of the river of the same name, we left Carandahy on horseback, with a number of servants and attendants, while our baggage was to be brought on by ox wagon.

At Paraúna Senhor Souza had one of his orchid collecting stations, and in due course we arrived at the place, which is magnificently situated, while the dense forests in the neighbourhood are the homes of some of the most beautiful orchids in the world. It is a small town, but of no small importance, as in the neighbouring mountains there are some mines of precious stones which, though worked in a very desultory and half-hearted way, produce considerable wealth.

The Senhor’s station was situated a little distance from the town, in a rather lonely spot on the banks of the river. It was in charge of a foreman named Chrispiniano Soares, and he had under him five or six Brazilian packers, and many orchid hunters, mostly Indians, who were intimately acquainted with the country round about for leagues and leagues.

My dear Juliette knew the place well also, as she had been there before; and now she displayed the greatest interest in the work that was being carried on, while her knowledge of the various species of plants brought in was wonderful. She could classify and name every plant.

Those were long delightful happy days. I was her willing, loving, devoted student, and she was my worshipped teacher. It made her so happy to explain to me the names and habits of the plants; and it filled me with happiness to see her happy. Neither of us ever reverted to the strange visitation in Rio, nor to the prophecy of the old nurse. Indeed, I don’t think we thought of it—at least I didn’t—our happiness was too great. No shadow fell upon it, and yet an awful, damnable shadow was creeping up. Oh, if I had only had some faint warning! Why was there no angel in heaven to give me some sign so that I might have saved my darling? But no sound came. No sign arose. It seemed as if all the people worshipped my sweet wife. She was so beautiful, so kind, so gentle, so womanly. But no one was possessed with prescience to utter a word of alarm to put me on my guard, so that I might have striven to avert the awful doom.

One day it chanced that a mule I was riding stumbled over a piece of timber and threw me, somewhat injuring my right leg, so that I had to lay up for a little while. I urged my dear one not to let my enforced imprisonment—which I was assured would only be of a few days’ duration—prevent her from taking her accustomed exercise. She said that she should remain by my side; but, oh, poor blind being that I was, the fiend prompted me to insist that she should go out and enjoy herself. It was not the custom of the country for ladies to go out alone, but in Juliette’s case the circumstances were somewhat different. Firstly, her father, who had travelled a good deal, had brought her up more in the English fashion, and she was accorded vastly more liberty than is generally accorded to Brazilian girls. And secondly, she had proved herself so useful in the orchid branch of her father’s business that he had allowed her to do much as she liked; and she had on more than one occasion gone out with some of the hunters into the very depths of the virgin forests, braving all the terrible dangers incidental to the pursuit of the blooms, and braving the hardships inseparable from it. In many ways Juliette was a wonderful woman. She was as clever as she was beautiful, and I who pen these lines declare solemnly that she was without a fault. Of course you will say I speak with a lover’s enthusiasm. Very well, let it be so. But I think of her, and I see her, as an angel of God, with the golden light of heaven upon her wings. In the first hours of my awful sorrow, when my heart was rent in twain and my poor brain was bursting, I think I cursed God, and called impiously upon Heaven to justify the act which plunged me suddenly from the happiest man on earth to the depths of a blank, maddening, damnable despair. But Heaven was silent, and God in His infinite wisdom let me suffer until the awful revelation was made to me which I shall presently record. Then I bowed my head and prayed to Him to smite me. But I lived. And it is only now, when long years have passed, and I draw nearer and nearer to the hour when I shall take my departure to my love, who waits for me with outstretched arms on Heaven’s frontiers, that I am able to write calmly and think calmly.

In this necessarily brief record I have shown no disposition to moralise; but I would venture to observe here that some lives are mysteries from their beginning to their end. The majority of people perhaps lead common, humdrum, vulgar, unemotional lives. And they die, never having known what it is to live; but few I fancy could be found who will venture to deny that in the words of the great English poet, “There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” We are after all but poor weak things, with but a limited vision, and to few only is it given to pierce the veil that screens us from Sheol. But to return to the thread of my story.

Juliette yielded to my persuasions, and one morning she said, if I could spare her, she was going with an old and faithful attendant, one Jocelino who all his life had been in her father’s employ, to a fazenda (farm), about a two leagues’ ride, to see a negro who, according to a report, had secured a specimen of an orchid not at that time classified. In my sweet love’s interest, as I thought then, I bade her go. And so her dear lips pressed mine, and promising that before the sun was below the horizon she would be at my side again, she went from me, and I looked upon her living face for the last time.

The sun gradually declined, and sank in gold and blood-red glory, but my love came not. One by one the great stars defined themselves in the deep blue heavens, but my love came not. The moon climbed up and flooded the earth with a mystic silver sheen, and yet she who was my heart and soul was still absent. A deadly fear stole upon me, and a strange foreboding turned me cold. I summoned Chrispiniano to my side and commanded him to get as many of his men together as he could, and, dividing them into parties, send them out to search for my missing love. He tried to reassure me that all was well. She had been benighted he said, and had found refuge at some fazenda. Old Jocelino, he declared, knew every inch of the country for scores of leagues, and was so devotedly attached to the young mistress that he would gladly yield up his life for her.

“Yes, Senhor,” continued Chrispiniano, “take my word for it. Your dear lady is safe with old Jocelino, and the morrow will be but young when your eyes will again be gladdened with the sight of your wife.”

I admit that the foreman’s words did afford me some comfort. Juliette, I thought, had allowed her enthusiasm to make her forgetful of the flight of time; and as night travelling in that country is out of the question, owing to the hundred and one dangers that beset the traveller who ventures to go forth in the darkness, she had sought the shelter of some hospitable roof, and so I countermanded the order for the search parties. But I passed an awful, restless night. No sleep came to me, and when the morning dawned I uttered a fervent “Thank God!” But that day was to prove worse than the preceding night—a day of awful, brain-corroding suspense. Instead of my love coming to me with the golden morn, no tidings of her were obtainable when the day was darkening to its close. Crippled as I was, I insisted on a horse being saddled, as I was determined to go and seek her; but when I attempted to mount into the saddle I found it to be physically impossible. So I had myself lifted up, but was unable to grip with my legs, and fell off again. I was therefore perforce compelled to desist in my attempt, but I sent into the town of Paraúna and offered a big reward to any one who would go in search of my dear one, and bring me tidings. In less than an hour a party of two dozen mounted men was formed, and, dividing into sixes, each set off in a different direction.

I will make no attempt to describe the horrible suspense of that night. When the sun began to glow again in the heavens it found me feverish and well-nigh distraught. The people at the station did their best to comfort me. They tried to cheer me; they spoke hopefully; they expressed themselves as certain that all would be well. But all their good-intentioned efforts were fruitless; some strange foreboding possessed me. If I looked up to the heavens it seemed to me as if I were looking through smoked glass; and during those heavy hours I fancied I heard a weird and hollow voice repeating in my ears these words:

“At last it is fulfilled! At last it is fulfilled!”

I had had myself placed on a couch in the veranda which commanded a view of the wood, and there I sat, and endured and suffered—not from the physical pain of my injured limb, for I felt nothing of it, but from mental torture.

As the afternoon waned I suddenly saw an Indian rushing down the road in an excited state. My heart leapt into my mouth, for I was sure he was the bearer of tidings. He tore up the steps of the veranda without any ceremony, and falling at my feet began to smite his breast, as is the custom of these people when they are the bearers of bad news. Then he wailed out his message:

“They have been found, and are being brought here; but they are both dead.”

The words beat in upon my tortured brain like the blows from a sledge-hammer. I have only a vague, dream-like knowledge of what followed. In my frenzy I rose like a giant in wrath, and I hurled the poor Indian from me with such terrific force that concussion of the brain, as I understand, ensued, and for days his life was despaired of. But I knew naught of all this. A merciful Providence stunned me, and day after day went by and I lay like one entranced. During this blank, my sweet wife and old Jocelino were hidden from the sight of men for ever and ever, for quick burial in that climate is imperatively necessary.

Senhor Souza, my father-in-law, arrived in time to attend the funeral of his child, but the poor old man’s heart was broken. They aver that when he turned from the graveside he looked twenty years older. All the light had gone out of his eyes, his back was bent, and he tottered and reeled and staggered like one who had the palsy. But a strong will-power upheld him for a time, because he had a duty to fulfil, which was to endeavour to bring the murderer or murderers to justice, for my dear one and Jocelino were both barbarously done to death.

You who have never suffered a great wrong at the hands of your fellow man may preach against vengeance; but as it is no virtue for a man to be honest when he has well-filled coffers, so he who decries vengeance when he has not been wronged is but an idle preacher. Let someone rob you of your most precious inheritance, and see then if you can sit calmly and exclaim “Kismet!”

Now listen to the story as it was gradually revealed to me when, after lying stunned and dazed for nearly three weeks, I began to realise once more that I was in the world of the living. Listen to it, I say, and you will not be surprised that I thirsted for vengeance. Up above the valley of Paraúna was a wild, barren, sun-scorched plateau which, after some three leagues or so, dipped abruptly into a gorge of great extent filled with virgin forest. Just where the plateau joined this belt of vegetation, the searchers found the bodies of Juliette and Jocelino. They were lying on their backs, and between them was a huge dead coral snake, one of the most deadly reptiles found in the Brazils. As it is not unusual for those who are bitten by this hideous creature to die almost immediately, so virulent and powerful is the venom it injects into the blood of its victims, that it was not an unnatural thought that both Juliette and the old servant had been bitten by the reptile. But two things served to almost instantly dispel this belief. The head of the snake was crushed, and on the bosom of sweet Juliette’s dress, as well as on the shirt of the man, was a great patch of blood. And when the bodies were brought down and examined by a doctor it was discovered that both had died by being stabbed to the heart with a long thin knife, and there was no sign or symptom of snakebite.

The dead coral snake lying between them, therefore, only added to the mystery. The horses they had ridden returned after many days by themselves. They had evidently wandered far and suffered much, but they were dumb and could tell nothing of the awful tale. They still carried their saddles and trappings. Nothing had been stolen. The mystery deepened, but about the mode of death there was no mystery. It was murder. Murder, cruel, revolting, damnable. Where the bodies were found a diligent search was made for the weapon with which the crime was committed, but it was not discovered. Jocelino, like all Brazilians who live in the country, carried a hunting knife, but it was long and broad, and it was resting unstained in its sheath attached to his belt.

Again I say it was murder—cruel, fiendish, deliberate murder. A crime so foul that it must have made the angels weep, and yet no angel in heaven stretched forth his hand to save my beloved from her awful end.

Bowed and broken though he was, Senhor Souza thirsted for vengeance on the slayer of his child, whom he loved with a tenderness passing words, and he offered a lavish reward to any one who would track the murderer down. To any individual of the people of the region the reward would have been a fortune, and Brazilian and Indian alike were stimulated to almost superhuman exertion. But the mystery defied their solving. The bodies lying side by side and the dead snake between them were elements in the puzzle to which no brain in that community seemed capable of finding an answer. As days went by and there was no result the reward was increased. The authorities themselves, usually lethargic and indifferent in Brazil, bestirred themselves in an unusual manner; but nothing came of it all. And as I began to drift back slowly to the living world, the old Senhor took to his bed, for his heart was broken. And it was decreed that he should rise no more as a man amongst men, for after lingering helpless and imbecile for many months, they carried him forth one golden day amidst the lamentations of his people, and laid him to rest beside his daughter.

And now what of myself? I have that still to tell which, for ghastly horror, has scarcely any parallel.

When I was able to realise the full measure of my sorrow, I knew that my beloved wife had been foully slain, and the motive for the crime was hard to define. But it seemed to me as I examined into the matter that probably she and the old servant had fallen victims to some strange superstition, and that might account for the dead snake being found between them. But whatever the motive that led to this diabolical destruction of two human beings, it was exceedingly desirable that the criminal should be discovered, so that he might be made an example of, as a terror to others who were inclined to evil-doing. In Brazil, unhappily, crime is common, but detection rare; at least, it is so in the wilder parts of the country. Money, however, is so greedily coveted by Brazilian and Indian alike that I watched with feverish yet hopeful anxiety the result of my father-in-law’s large reward. And when I found there were no results, I added to it considerably myself, and I sent to Rio for a man who bore a high reputation as a detective. He was a half-breed in the Government employ, but he was just as much a failure as any one else. He learnt nothing. The mystery remained a mystery.

After this it seemed to me that further effort would be useless, for weeks had passed since the commission of the deed, and every day that went by only served to increase the difficulty. Around us was an immense tract of country consisting of valley, mountain, and virgin forest. Most of the tract was sparsely populated. There were no telegraph wires, no railways.

As may be supposed, I felt reluctant to tear myself away from the spot where my sweet one slept—notwithstanding that the place was hateful to me, for it was associated with her mysterious death. But duty called, and I had already been too long absent from my post. Everything, however, seemed hateful to me. Life itself had lost its savour, for the light of my life had gone out. No man could have been happier than I when I arrived in Paraúna. A few short weeks and that happiness had been turned to a sorrow so deep, so overwhelming that I solemnly declare I would have faced death with the most perfect resignation, and with the sure and certain hope that I should meet my darling in a world where there is neither sorrow nor sighing. But my departure could no longer be delayed, and my preparations being completed I had arranged to start on the morrow.

That night, after my evening meal, I sat alone, feeling miserable, dejected, broken-hearted, when there came to me old José, one of the station hands. He had been born and brought up in the Paraúna district, and had never travelled fifty leagues away from his birthplace. He was intensely superstitious, intensely devout, and no less intensely bigoted; but he had been a faithful servitor, and though he was then bowed and frail he was still retained in the service.

“Senhor,” he began, making a profound obeisance, “truly it is sad that the mystery of your sweet lady’s and Jocelino’s death has not been solved. But what money has failed to accomplish devilry may do.”

He looked so strange that I thought he must have been indulging too freely in the native wine, and I asked sharply, “What do you mean?”

“Let not your anger fall on me, Senhor. I do not practise devilry myself; the saints guard me from it.” Here he shuddered and crossed himself. “But I have heard some wonderful stories of Anita, though, God be praised, I have given her a wide berth.” He crossed himself again.

“Anita! who is Anita?” I exclaimed impatiently.

“The devil’s agent, Senhor,” he answered, “as all the country knows for miles round; but few can look upon her and live.”

“Do not befool me with this nonsense,” I said. “I am sick at heart, and weary. Go. Leave me. I am in no mood to listen to silly stories.”

“Nay, Senhor, I have no desire to befool you. But Anita—may the Virgin guard us from evil—is a witch, and they do say she has power over life and death. Perhaps—I only say perhaps—she might help you to bring the murderer to justice.”

Although I was irritated and annoyed, and inclined to peremptorily order the old fellow out of my presence, I restrained myself, he seemed so earnest, so sincere. So I was induced to question him further, and I learnt that somewhere up in the mountains an old and withered woman dwelt in a cavern, and consorted with snakes and wild animals, but was shunned by human beings as a rule, for she was said to possess the evil eye, and it was generally believed that she could assume any shape, and drive men mad with fear. Anyway she was accredited with superhuman powers, and could show you your future as well as read your past.

I suppose that the frame of mind I was then in, coupled with a remembrance of the extraordinary incidents in Rio, had something to do with my desire to know more of this witch woman, and I asked José if he could take me to her. But he seemed startled by the bare suggestion, and again made the sign of the cross on his breast and forehead. No, he could not, and would not, though I poured gold in sackfuls at his feet; but there was Torquato, the negro in the village, he might for a consideration conduct me to Anita. Torquato was a dissolute, drunken fellow; by calling, a hunter, and used to making long and lonely journeys over the prairies and into the depths of the virgin forests. He was daring withal, and he had boasted in his cups that he had often sat with Anita, and she had shown him wonders. But of course no one believed him. They called him braggart and liar. Anxious to test if there was any truth in José’s wonderful stories of Anita’s power, I bade him fetch Torquato to me. What I had witnessed in Rio and what had happened since had removed my scepticism, if ever I had been sceptical, and now I was disposed to clutch at any desperate chance that promised to solve the mystery. In about an hour Torquato was introduced to me. He was a pure negro of powerful build, but beyond that was not remarkable. He was ignorant, but intelligent, and had the instincts of the born hunter. I questioned him closely. Yes, he knew Anita, he assured me, and could guide me to her. She was undoubtedly in league with the Evil One, he averred, and could perform miracles. The only way I could propitiate her would be by taking her an offering of tobacco and rum, for which she had a great partiality. My curiosity being aroused, I resolved to postpone my journey, and start off at daybreak, with Torquato as guide, to visit Anita, for he undertook to guide me, and said that as he had always propitiated the witch-woman he did not fear her, but he would not be answerable for me. I must take all risk. The weather, which up to then had been exceptionally fine, changed in the night, and the morning broke with a threatening and lowering sky. The natives predicted a great storm, but in that region a storm threatens long before it breaks, so I started off with Torquato, for I could not restrain my impatience; he carrying on his broad shoulders a knapsack containing, amongst other things, a quantity of rum and tobacco, in accordance with his advice. I had taken the precaution to fully arm myself. I had a double-barrelled hunting rifle, a six-chambered revolver, and a formidable hunting knife, as well as a plentiful supply of ammunition. Our road lay by a rough track that wound up precipitous slopes; then across a strip of prairie and forest; and finally we had to toil up a sun-smitten, weather-scarred mountain side. But during our journey we had caught no glimpse of the sun. The overcast sky had been growing blacker and blacker, and when we reached the mountain heavy drops of rain began to patter down, and from out the darkened heavens there leapt a blinding flash of fire that seemed to extend from horizon to horizon; it was followed instantly by a peal of thunder that crashed and reverberated until one could almost have imagined that the end of all things had come. So terrific are these storms in the highlands of Brazil that they are very alarming to any one unaccustomed to them; moreover, the deluge of rain that falls makes a shelter not only desirable but necessary. Fortunately, the rain was only spitting then, but Torquato began to look round anxiously for shelter, when, with quite startling suddenness, and as if she had risen from the earth, a woman stood before us, and demanded to know what we wanted there. She was the wildest, weirdest, strangest looking woman I have ever set eyes upon. She was almost a dwarf in stature, with misshapen limbs, and long skinny arms out of all proportion to the rest of her body. Her face—I declare it solemnly—was hardly human. It was more like a gargoyle from some old cathedral. A few scant grey hairs covered her head; and her chin and lips were also covered with a growth of wiry grey hair. Curiously enough, she had excellent teeth, which were in striking contrast to the rest of her appearance, and her eyes, deep sunk in their sockets and overhung with a pent-house fringe of wiry hair, were keen and brilliant as a hawk’s, and seemed to look not at you but through you. The upper part of her body was clothed with a blanket, tied with a piece of rope at the waist, but her arms, legs, and feet were bare.

This singular-looking being was the woman we were seeking. Torquato recognised and saluted her, and spoke some words in the Indian language which I did not understand. She then addressed me in Portuguese, and as I marvelled at her perfect teeth and brilliant eyes, I marvelled still more at the clearness of her voice. Its tones were the dulcet tones of a young girl’s. Indeed, I am not sure if that is a right description, for a girl’s voice is often harsh, whereas Anita’s was sweet and mellow. But in general appearance no more repulsive being could be imagined, and it was easy to understand how great an influence she could exert over the minds of superstitious people; nor am I ashamed to confess that I myself regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

“The Senhor seeks me?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Follow then, and I will give you shelter from the storm.”

She turned and led the way up the mountain. Although her feet were bare, the rocks made no impression upon her, and yet my feet were hurt, well shod as I was. Suddenly we came upon a sort of rocky platform before the entrance to a cave. It was on the very edge of a deep ravine—a rent in the earth, caused probably by an earthquake in the first instance, and gradually widened and deepened by the action of water. The sides of this ravine went down in broken precipices for thousands of feet, and were clothed with dense undergrowth and monstrous ferns, the home, as one could well imagine, of every reptile and loathsome insect to be found in Brazil. At the bottom of the ravine was a brawling river.

We had scarcely gained the shelter of the cave, at the mouth of which some wood ashes still smouldered, when the storm burst with appalling fury. We could see the lightning occasionally smite the rocks, tearing off great masses and hurling them into the dark depths of the ravine, where probably human foot had never yet trod; while the roll of the thunder was so awful that it seemed like the bursting up of the universe. Anita appeared to delight in the storm, and now and again she raised her long skinny arms straight up above her head and laughed like one demented. Presently she turned and motioned us to follow her, and led the way into the depths of the cavern, having first lighted a pine torch which she drew from a recess in the rocks, and plunged it into the glowing ashes. We went along a kind of corridor, but had to stoop low to avoid battering our skulls against the jagged roof. The floor was wet and soft, and Anita, in answer to my inquiries, said it was due to a natural spring of water which gave her a supply all the year round.

When we had traversed about a dozen yards, the roof got higher in the passage, and after another few yards we found ourselves in a spacious chamber, with an almost perfectly level floor. Looking up, one could see nothing but darkness, so high was the roof, and beyond was what appeared to be another passage. The cavern, according to Anita, penetrated into the bowels of the mountains for more than a league, but she alone knew the secrets of those inner passages and chambers, and would reveal them to no one. I was led to inquire the cause of a strange rumbling noise I heard, and she told me it was due to a subterranean river.

In the chamber in which we found ourselves a hammock was stretched from two opposite points of rock, and afforded the witch good sleeping quarters, no doubt. There were also two or three wooden stools about, and on the floor, arranged on what appeared to be a square of carpet, was a miscellaneous collection of articles, including an old-fashioned sword, some peculiarly shaped goblets, a large wooden bowl, some human bones, several knives, including a hunting knife, an old gun, and various boxes. In another corner of the chamber I noticed a quantity of cooking utensils, which seemed to indicate that there was a good deal of the human about the old witch after all, and that if she loved solitude she also liked a certain amount of comfort. In such a country a woman of that kind was sure to get an evil reputation, whether she deserved it or not.

At my bidding Torquato unpacked his knapsack, and I presented my peace-offering of tobacco and rum, which the hag accepted with every sign of gratification, and filling a wooden cup with some of the rum, tossed it off at a draught. She had stuck the torch in a niche or hole in the rock, and its flickering, dancing flame threw a Rembrandt weirdness over the scene; and every time the woman’s eyes caught the flame they glowed and glistened with such an unnatural light that I experienced a sense of creepiness which is hard to describe. The woman’s whole appearance was so uncanny that while the hammock and the cooking utensils proclaimed her human, she seemed altogether unnatural, and, I am bound to add, devilish. She squatted on the floor while I and Torquato occupied stools. I told her the purpose of my errand; and the whole of the time while I was speaking she fixed her glowing eyes upon me, but they did not look at me, but through me. When I had finished my story she drew her knees up, rested her chin on them, and became very thoughtful; and though I spoke to her several times, she made no reply, and Torquato said she was in a trance. Whether that was really so or not I don’t know. But when the silence had remained unbroken for nearly half an hour, she rose up slowly, and not without a certain dignity and grace, and turning her glowing eyes on me, said:

“In three days the Senhor will come here again when the sun is declining, and I will talk with him.”

“But why not now,” I asked, beginning to regard her as a humbug whose strange and uncouth appearance helped her to pass as a witch-woman.

“I have spoken. In three days,” she replied, in such a decisive, commanding manner that I felt further parley would be useless.

“And can Torquato come with me?” I asked.

“Yes. ’Tis well he should. Go.”

There was no mistaking that peremptory order to depart; and, led by the negro, I groped my way back along the corridor, and was thankful to get into the open air. The rain had ceased, but the thunder still growled, the lightning still flashed; the air was delightful and refreshing after the rain. We stood for a few minutes at the entrance to the cavern drinking in pure draughts of the cool fresh air, when suddenly there issued from the cave an eldritch scream, so piercing, so agonising that it seemed to indicate suffering beyond human endurance, so startling that I instinctively made a movement to rush back into the interior of the cavern with a view to ascertaining the cause of that awful cry. But Torquato gripped my arm like a vice, and drew me forcibly away. His eyes were filled with a scared expression, and his face told of the deadly fear working within.

“Come away, come,” he whispered with suppressed expressed excitement. “Anita is quarrelling with her master the Devil, and he is scourging her.”

I could hardly refrain from bursting into laughter at this statement; but Torquato looked so serious, so terribly in earnest, and evidently so firmly believed in what he said that I refrained. He continued to drag me along for some distance before he released my arm. He was then breathless and agitated, and sat down on a rock, and removing his large grass hat, he scraped the beads of perspiration from his forehead.

I was sorry, when I came to think of it, that I had allowed myself to be baulked in my intention to learn the cause of the strange wild cry which presumably came from Anita’s lips; and for an instant I was tempted to reascend the mountain and enter the cavern again. But a glance at Torquato’s scared face caused me to alter my mind, and in a few minutes we recommenced the descent, and in due time got back to the station. I had then come to feel a conviction that Anita was a humbug, and the scream was part of her imposition.

It was with something like feverish anxiety that I waited for the three days to pass. I really had no faith at that time in Anita’s powers to tell me what I wished to know; but she was a remarkable creature, so uncanny and weird and wild in her aspects, so interesting as a study of abnormality that I was anxious to know more of her. I think I may safely say curiosity prompted me more than anything else, though I thought there was a bare possibility she might be able to clear up the mystery. When the morning of the third day came I found that Torquato was reluctant to again visit Anita, but at last I overcame his reluctance and scruples by the medium of silver dollars liberally bestowed, and without making known the objects of our journey we set off, well armed as before, and well provided with food in case of need. We hadn’t the advantage of a clouded sky as on the previous visit, and the sun beat down with pitiless rays from the clear blue heavens. The heat was intense and tried my powers of endurance very much, but Torquato, being a child of the sun, was indifferent to the heat. As I suffered a good deal our progress was necessarily slow. Moreover, we had to exercise extreme caution on account of the numerous deadly snakes that lay in our path basking in the broiling sun, amongst them being the brilliant dazzling coral snake, one of the most beautiful but most deadly of the serpent tribe. It is a very vicious brute, and is said to be the only snake in Brazil that will attack a man without provocation—though in some districts the same thing is said about the Sorocotinga, which is also terribly deadly, and with no beauty to fascinate as in the case of the coral.

So slow was our progress that the sun was far down towards the western horizon when we reached our destination. We were startled by suddenly and unexpectedly coming upon Anita squatted on her haunches before the entrance to the cavern, while round her right arm was coiled a coral snake, its head moving backwards and forwards with a rhythmical sway. Instinctively I drew back, for the sight was so repulsive, but Anita rose and told us to follow her, and when I expressed my dislike of the snake, she waved her left hand before it, and its head and neck dropped straight down as if it were dead. I was amazed, for this power over the deadly reptile proved in itself that she was no ordinary being, although she might be an impostor in other respects.

Both Torquato and myself hesitated to follow the hag, when noticing this she turned angrily and cried:

“Why come you here if you are afraid? You seek knowledge which I alone can give you. If you are cowards, go at once and come here no more.”

The taunt had its effect. I did my best to overcome the repugnance and even horror that I felt and entered the cavern with boldness, or at any rate assumed boldness, and Torquato followed. We reached the inner chamber where we had been on the previous visit. A burning torch was stuck in the rock, and threw a blood-red glare over the scene. I noted that the carpet was no longer there, but in its place stood a peculiarly shaped brazier containing living charcoal that gave off unpleasant fumes.

The old woman uncoiled the snake from her arm. It offered no resistance. It appeared to be perfectly passive. Then she coiled it into the figure of 8 at her feet, and told us to sit cross-legged on the ground as she did.

“You seek to know the past,” she said, fixing her awful eyes upon me.

“Yes.”

“But not the future?”

“No.”

“’Tis well.”

She began to make eccentric movements with both her hands before our eyes, and what followed was as a dream. I was conscious of a peculiar sense of languor stealing over me that was far from unpleasant. Presently I saw the woman snatch the burning torch from the niche in the rock and extinguish it, and we were plunged in Cimmerian gloom. A few minutes, as it seemed to me, passed, when a startling and peculiar light permeated the cavern. It proceeded from the brazier, from which rose a slender blue column of vapour that gave off apparently a phosphorescent glow. Anita was still standing, the snake was hanging from her neck, its head darting backwards and forwards viciously as if it were attacking its prey, while the woman with her long skinny arms described figures in the air. The blue, flowing column of smoke or vapour rose slowly, for it was dense and spread out mushroom shape until it filled every corner and crevice, and I seemed at last to be gazing through the medium of blue glass at a rolling prairieland over which the sun was shining brightly. The woman, the snake, the brazier, had faded away now, and only that vast stretch of sun-scorched prairie was visible. But presently, afar off, I saw two people on horseback. They gradually came nearer, and I recognised my sweet wife and Jocelino. Juliette was laughing merrily and seemed blithe and happy. They halted in the shadow of a rock, and hobbling their horses partook of their midday meal. That finished, and after a short siesta, they mounted their steeds and rode at a gallop towards a belt of virgin forest which they entered and were lost to my view. Presently they emerged, each bearing a mass of a peculiar orchid with flowers of the most brilliant colours. They dismounted again and knelt down on the ground to arrange the flowers in a more convenient way for carrying. From out of the forest, and all unobserved by them, a tall, powerful Indian hunter stole, and crept stealthily towards them. I wanted to cry out, to warn them, but I couldn’t; I was spell-bound. The Indian reached them, and with an extraordinarily rapid sweep of his arm he plunged a long knife into my loved one’s bosom. Jocelino half started up, but before he could offer resistance the arm swept around and the knife was plunged into his breast. With a grim sardonic grin on his features, the murderer wiped his dripping blade, and returned to the forest, reappearing after some lapse of time grasping a writhing coral snake, which he suddenly flung high into the air, and when it fell with a dull thud at his feet he struck it on the head with the handle of his knife.

He next dropped upon his knees and seemed to go through some form of incantation, throwing dirt upon his head, bowing his forehead to the ground, and raising his hand to heaven alternately, until at last he rose, laid the bodies side by side on their backs, and placed the snake at full length between them. Then the whole scene faded, and there was a blank.

Once more the same scene came before my eyes, but this time it was moonlight. The soft silver light threw a mysterious sheen over the landscape. I saw a man come out of the forest. It was the murderer. His face was filled with a look of concentrated horror, and he began to move slowly across the prairie, glancing about him in a nervous, agitated way. I became conscious at last that he was coming towards me, and I was filled with a fierce joy at the thought that when he came within reach I could strangle where he stood. The strangeness of it all is I could not move; I appeared to be rooted to the spot, but the Indian ever approached nearer to me, drawn by some power which he tried to resist, but against which he was helpless. And so nearer and nearer he came, and all the while that expression of concentrated horror was on his face. Although I could not move from the spot where I seemed to be rooted, fiercer and fiercer grew my joy, and I waved my hands about in expectant eagerness at the thought of being able at last to crush the worthless life out of the murderer of my sainted wife. On he came. I got frantic, I tugged and strained, but could not break away from the power that held me; my eyes ached with the strain put upon them, my pulses beat with a loud, audible noise, so it seemed to me; there was a burring and buzzing in my ears, an awful burning sensation was in my brain. I felt as if I were going mad with the horror of suspense.

At length the murderer came within my reach. I flung out my hands to seize him, when suddenly the moonlight faded, and there was total darkness. How long this darkness lasted I know not, but gradually light began to spread over the landscape again; the moon shone full once more. At my feet the Indian lay on his back. One knee was drawn up; one arm was bent under his body the other was raised up as if he were appealing to Heaven; his face was twisted and contorted with agony. He made no motion; he was stark and dead. Some strange irresistible fascination caused me to fix my gaze upon him, and as I watched I saw the face wither, the eyes fall into the sockets. Then the flesh of the arm turned green, and blue, and yellow, and gradually dropped rotten from the bones. Next the rest of the body began to rot away leaving the bones bare. Loathsome crawling things fed upon the decaying flesh, and cobras twisted themselves round his legs and arms.

The maddening, ghastly, gruesome horror of the scene was more than human brain could stand; and when a huge vulture suddenly descended and tore out the entrails and began to gorge upon them the climax was reached. With a mighty effort I burst the spell that enthralled me; uttered a great cry, and fell prone upon the ground.

What happened after that I know not. What I do know is I seemed suddenly to awake from a deep sleep. Above me the stars and moon were shining. From somewhere, far below, came the sound of falling water. The air was deliciously cool. I was covered with the skin of an animal, and squatted near me was Anita waving a palm leaf to keep the insects from my face. I glanced round and recognised that I was lying at the entrance to the cave.

“What does all this mean?” I asked.

“You have dreamed dreams,” she answered. “You have seen that which is. Seek to know no more. But sleep, sleep, sleep.” She repeated the word “sleep” with a sort of drowsy croon that seemed to lull and soothe me.

There was another blank. When I next awoke it was broad daylight and the sun was already high. I was lying on a bed of skins at the entrance to the cave. I sat up, and the sound of the falling water far below in the ravine sounded pleasantly. I called “Anita, Anita!” but there was no response. Presently I saw a figure crawling from the cavern. It was Torquato. He suddenly flung himself upon me, and wept and moaned like one distraught.

“Oh, master, master, what horrors!” he cried.

“Of what do you speak?” I asked. “Tell me all.”

Gradually he regained control of himself. Then he recited to me all he had witnessed. It was identical with what I had seen. The murder, the mystery of the snake, the rotting corpse, the loathsome maggots, the vulture gnawing the entrails. Again I called Anita, but there was no response. I bade Torquato go into the cave and seek her, but he flatly refused. I struggled to my feet. I felt strangely ill and weak, and every now and then I shuddered as a remembrance of the horror came back. Still I was anxious to see Anita again and question her. I entered the cavern, but all was dark and silent. I groped my way forward for some distance and called once more. Only the echoes answered me. It was all so solemn, so awe-inspiring, so mysterious that I was glad to return to the fresh air again and to hear the voice of my companion. It was evident Anita did not intend to come to us, and so we slowly made our way down the mountain and reached the station at midday. And I had resolved by that time to make another visit to Anita. For several days, however, I had to keep my bed as I was feverish and ill. Then I summoned Torquato. He had also been ill, and when I asked him if he would go with me to Anita once more, he said, “No, not for a ton of gold”; so I sent to the little town for a notary. When he came I requested Torquato to tell the notary his marvellous experience and what he had seen. The notary wrote it down; Torquato signed it, and I appended a note over my own signature to the effect that I had witnessed the same scene. We next went before the Mayor of Paraúna and testified on oath to the correctness of our narrative, and that done, the strange document was deposited in the municipal archives of the town, where no doubt it can still be seen by the curious. My next step was to send out a party of trained hunters to the place where the bodies had been found, with the instructions to search for miles round for any indications of a human skeleton. They returned after many days, and reported that two leagues or so from the spot where the crime was committed, in a sandy sun-smitten waste, where only a few cacti grew, they came across the bleached skeleton of a man. The bones were falling apart, but it seemed as if one leg had been drawn up, one arm bent under the body, the other raised. Beside the body lay a long, rusty knife. Who the man was we never discovered. Even the knife was unlike those in use in that part of the country. That the skeleton was the skeleton of my wife’s murderer I haven’t a shadow of a doubt. Why he murdered her must remain a mystery until the secrets of all hearts be known. Who Anita was, and by what marvellous power she was able to show me the horrors she did, I have no knowledge. There are mysteries of the earth which the human brain cannot comprehend. It is given to only a few to see as I have seen and live.

For many years I have kept the awful secrets to myself, but the sands of my life are running low, and I resolved to give to the world the story of my strange experiences. To those who may be inclined to scoff I would repeat, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

NOTE TO “THE MYSTIC SPELL.”—Although Signor Roderick, who supplies the material for the foregoing remarkable story, suggests no theory for the murder of his wife and her attendant, any one who has travelled in the interior of Brazil will have no difficulty in doing so. The Indians are exceedingly superstitious, resentful, and blood-thirsty, as they are in many parts of Mexico. In the case of the Brazilians who inhabit the wild parts of the country, they regard certain parts of the virgin forests as their own special domains. As mentioned in the story, it is very unusual for a lady of good social position to be seen abroad, and the freedom which Juliette enjoyed in this respect was an innovation. Now if the vision that Signor Roderick saw, and which was conjured up by the mystic power of the witch-woman, was an accurate representation of the crime, it is easy to understand that some savage Indian, who had seen Juliette and Jocelino enter the forest and carry off the orchid bloom, resented it. Moreover, he may have regarded Juliette as an unnatural being, for probably he had never seen a white woman before. No women—save Indian women, and they but rarely—ever entered those deadly forests, the haunts and homes of the most venomous reptiles and the most savage animals, where there are plants exuding so virulent a poison that if but one drop falls on the flesh gangrene ensues; where loathsome insects fall upon the intruder from the trees and eat their way into his body; where the very air is deadly to those who breathe it, other than the native born. Juliette’s presence, therefore, in such a place must have filled the Indian with dire alarm, and inflamed him with a desire to slay her. To him, no doubt, the crime would appear as a justifiable one. Anyway, with the stealth and cunning of his kind he crept after her, and his cruel knife drank her blood, and having killed her, it followed as a matter of course that he should kill her companion.

Now these Indians worship strange gods and sacrifice to them, and snake sacrifice is common, not only in the interior of Brazil, but in Mexico. The slaying of the coral snake was therefore a sacrifice on the part of the murderer. How he met his own death must ever remain a mystery. Probably he himself perished from snake bite, for though these Indians show an extraordinary fearlessness of poisonous reptiles, and will catch them and handle them in a way that makes a stranger shudder, they are not proof against their bites, although they boast that they possess infallible antidotes against the venom of the serpent. This, however, may be regarded as no more than a boast. In the forests of Brazil are to be found some of the most horrible snakes the world produces. Apart from the Cobra coral, or to give it its scientific name, Elaps maregravii, rattle snakes of the most virulent kind are found, and then there is the hideous Cascavel. It is said that death follows the bite of this snake almost immediately. The victim goes suddenly blind, and the flesh commences to peel off his bones through gangrene even before the breath is out of his body. The annual death roll from snake bite in all parts of South America is appalling; and, as might be supposed, the Indians who roam the forests and prairies, either as animal or orchid hunters, furnish a large percentage of the victims. It is a feasible theory, therefore, that the cruel murderer of Juliette and Jocelino lost his life through snake bite, probably the bite of the Cascavel.

As regards Anita, one can only suppose that she was possessed of some strange mesmeric or hypnotic power; but even if that were so, one is puzzled to understand how she was able to show her subjects the scene and incidents of that crime unless she herself knew them. The theory that suggests itself here is that during the three days’ interval between Signor Roderick consulting her and his second visit, she had learned the story of the crime from some of the wandering Indians. She herself was an Indian and would be regarded by her tribe as “a wise woman.” But whatever theory one likes to accept, it is a well-known fact attested over and over again by travellers that some of the Indian women of South America, especially in the neighbourhood of the Amazon, are gifted with the power of second sight and of forecasting the future. Such women are held in veneration by their own people, but Christians believe that they have an unholy alliance with the common enemy of mankind.

SREDNI VASHTAR

Saki (H. H. Munro)

1910

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin’s cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him “for his good” was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman’s religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. de Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. de Ropp was the ground-plan on which he based and detested all respectability.

After a while Conradin’s absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. “It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers,” she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing; there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it “gave trouble,” a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.

“I thought you liked toast,” she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

“Sometimes,” said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, to-night he asked a boon.

“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin’s bitter litany went up: “Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

Mrs. de Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.

“What are you keeping in that locked hutch?” she asked. “I believe it’s guinea-pigs. I’ll have them all cleared away.”

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:—

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace but he brought them death,

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the paean of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded; out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

“Tea is ready,” said the sour-faced maid; “where is the mistress?”

“She went down to the shed some time ago,” said Conradin.

And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

“Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn’t for the life of me!” exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves Conradin made himself another piece of toast.

THE INTERLOPERS

Saki (H. H. Munro)

1912

In a forest of mixed growth somewhere on the eastern spurs of the Karpathians, a man stood one winter night watching and listening, as though he waited for some beast of the woods to come within the range of his vision, and, later, of his rifle. But the game for whose presence he kept so keen an outlook was none that figured in the sportsman’s calendar as lawful and proper for the chase; Ulrich von Gradwitz patrolled the dark forest in quest of a human enemy.

The forest lands of Gradwitz were of wide extent and well stocked with game; the narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on its outskirt was not remarkable for the game it harboured or the shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of all its owner’s territorial possessions. A famous law suit, in the days of his grandfather, had wrested it from the illegal possession of a neighbouring family of petty landowners; the dispossessed party had never acquiesced in the judgment of the Courts, and a long series of poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the relationships between the families for three generations. The neighbour feud had grown into a personal one since Ulrich had come to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he detested and wished ill to it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the quarrel and the tireless game-snatcher and raider of the disputed border-forest. The feud might, perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the personal ill-will of the two men had not stood in the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another’s blood, as men each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this wind-scourged winter night Ulrich had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest, not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to keep a look-out for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being afoot from across the land boundary. The roebuck, which usually kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were running like driven things to-night, and there was movement and unrest among the creatures that were wont to sleep through the dark hours. Assuredly there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Ulrich could guess the quarter from whence it came.

He strayed away by himself from the watchers whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree trunks and listening through the whistling and skirling of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight or sound of the marauders. If only on this wild night, in this dark, lone spot, he might come across Georg Znaeym, man to man, with none to witness—that was the wish that was uppermost in his thoughts. And as he stepped round the trunk of a huge beech he came face to face with the man he sought.

The two enemies stood glaring at one another for a long silent moment. Each had a rifle in his hand, each had hate in his heart and murder uppermost in his mind. The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime. But a man who has been brought up under the code of a restraining civilisation cannot easily nerve himself to shoot down his neighbour in cold blood and without word spoken, except for an offence against his hearth and honour. And before the moment of hesitation had given way to action a deed of Nature’s own violence overwhelmed them both. A fierce shriek of the storm had been answered by a splitting crash over their heads, and ere they could leap aside a mass of falling beech tree had thundered down on them. Ulrich von Gradwitz found himself stretched on the ground, one arm numb beneath him and the other held almost as helplessly in a tight tangle of forked branches, while both legs were pinned beneath the fallen mass. His heavy shooting-boots had saved his feet from being crushed to pieces, but if his fractures were not as serious as they might have been, at least it was evident that he could not move from his present position till some one came to release him. The descending twigs had slashed the skin of his face, and he had to wink away some drops of blood from his eyelashes before he could take in a general view of the disaster. At his side, so near that under ordinary circumstances he could almost have touched him, lay Georg Znaeym, alive and struggling, but obviously as helplessly pinioned down as himself. All round them lay a thick-strewn wreckage of splintered branches and broken twigs.

Relief at being alive and exasperation at his captive plight brought a strange medley of pious thank-offerings and sharp curses to Ulrich’s lips. Georg, who was nearly blinded with the blood which trickled across his eyes, stopped his struggling for a moment to listen, and then gave a short, snarling laugh.

“So you’re not killed, as you ought to be, but you’re caught, anyway,” he cried; “caught fast. Ho, what a jest, Ulrich von Gradwitz snared in his stolen forest. There’s real justice for you!”

And he laughed again, mockingly and savagely.

“I’m caught in my own forest-land,” retorted Ulrich. “When my men come to release us you will wish, perhaps, that you were in a better plight than caught poaching on a neighbour’s land, shame on you.”

Georg was silent for a moment; then he answered quietly:

“Are you sure that your men will find much to release? I have men, too, in the forest to-night, close behind me, and they will be here first and do the releasing. When they drag me out from under these damned branches it won’t need much clumsiness on their part to roll this mass of trunk right over on the top of you. Your men will find you dead under a fallen beech tree. For form’s sake I shall send my condolences to your family.”

“It is a useful hint,” said Ulrich fiercely. “My men had orders to follow in ten minutes time, seven of which must have gone by already, and when they get me out—I will remember the hint. Only as you will have met your death poaching on my lands I don’t think I can decently send any message of condolence to your family.”

“Good,” snarled Georg, “good. We fight this quarrel out to the death, you and I and our foresters, with no cursed interlopers to come between us. Death and damnation to you, Ulrich von Gradwitz.”

“The same to you, Georg Znaeym, forest-thief, game-snatcher.”

Both men spoke with the bitterness of possible defeat before them, for each knew that it might be long before his men would seek him out or find him; it was a bare matter of chance which party would arrive first on the scene.

Both had now given up the useless struggle to free themselves from the mass of wood that held them down; Ulrich limited his endeavours to an effort to bring his one partially free arm near enough to his outer coat-pocket to draw out his wine-flask. Even when he had accomplished that operation it was long before he could manage the unscrewing of the stopper or get any of the liquid down his throat. But what a Heaven-sent draught it seemed! It was an open winter, and little snow had fallen as yet, hence the captives suffered less from the cold than might have been the case at that season of the year; nevertheless, the wine was warming and reviving to the wounded man, and he looked across with something like a throb of pity to where his enemy lay, just keeping the groans of pain and weariness from crossing his lips.

“Could you reach this flask if I threw it over to you?” asked Ulrich suddenly; “there is good wine in it, and one may as well be as comfortable as one can. Let us drink, even if to-night one of us dies.”

“No, I can scarcely see anything; there is so much blood caked round my eyes,” said Georg, “and in any case I don’t drink wine with an enemy.”

Ulrich was silent for a few minutes, and lay listening to the weary screeching of the wind. An idea was slowly forming and growing in his brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked across at the man who was fighting so grimly against pain and exhaustion. In the pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling the old fierce hatred seemed to be dying down.

“Neighbour,” he said presently, “do as you please if your men come first. It was a fair compact. But as for me, I’ve changed my mind. If my men are the first to come you shall be the first to be helped, as though you were my guest. We have quarrelled like devils all our lives over this stupid strip of forest, where the trees can’t even stand upright in a breath of wind. Lying here to-night thinking I’ve come to think we’ve been rather fools; there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute. Neighbour, if you will help me to bury the old quarrel I—I will ask you to be my friend.”

Georg Znaeym was silent for so long that Ulrich thought, perhaps, he had fainted with the pain of his injuries. Then he spoke slowly and in jerks.

“How the whole region would stare and gabble if we rode into the market-square together. No one living can remember seeing a Znaeym and a von Gradwitz talking to one another in friendship. And what peace there would be among the forester folk if we ended our feud to-night. And if we choose to make peace among our people there is none other to interfere, no interlopers from outside…. You would come and keep the Sylvester night beneath my roof, and I would come and feast on some high day at your castle…. I would never fire a shot on your land, save when you invited me as a guest; and you should come and shoot with me down in the marshes where the wildfowl are. In all the countryside there are none that could hinder if we willed to make peace. I never thought to have wanted to do other than hate you all my life, but I think I have changed my mind about things too, this last half-hour. And you offered me your wine-flask…. Ulrich von Gradwitz, I will be your friend.”

For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic reconciliation would bring about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful gusts through the naked branches and whistling round the tree-trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring release and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private prayer that his men might be the first to arrive, so that he might be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had become a friend.

Presently, as the wind dropped for a moment, Ulrich broke silence.

“Let’s shout for help,” he said; “in this lull our voices may carry a little way.”

“They won’t carry far through the trees and undergrowth,” said Georg, “but we can try. Together, then.”

The two raised their voices in a prolonged hunting call.

“Together again,” said Ulrich a few minutes later, after listening in vain for an answering halloo.

“I heard something that time, I think,” said Ulrich.

“I heard nothing but the pestilential wind,” said Georg hoarsely.

There was silence again for some minutes, and then Ulrich gave a joyful cry.

“I can see figures coming through the wood. They are following in the way I came down the hillside.”

Both men raised their voices in as loud a shout as they could muster.

“They hear us! They’ve stopped. Now they see us. They’re running down the hill towards us,” cried Ulrich.

“How many of them are there?” asked Georg.

“I can’t see distinctly,” said Ulrich; “nine or ten,”

“Then they are yours,” said Georg; “I had only seven out with me.”

“They are making all the speed they can, brave lads,” said Ulrich gladly.

“Are they your men?” asked Georg. “Are they your men?” he repeated impatiently as Ulrich did not answer.

“No,” said Ulrich with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of a man unstrung with hideous fear.

“Who are they?” asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen.

“Wolves.”

THE FROZEN MAN

John Trevena

1912

The country was the home of the cold genius of the north: a ridiculous ball of sun, no warmer than the moon, surrounded by coronae, the air glittering with crystals, every bush and bough coated with glazed frost; I had but to kick up the snow to see a shower of diamonds; and above the steel-blue of the horizon hung a mirage, a deserted city of ice, a place of dreams and folklore. While I was staring at the spires and pinnacles shooting upward from silent streets of cloud, looking in vain for the snow-clad ghosts which should have been walking there, Chief Factor Armstrong came across, drew the corn-cob from his mouth, and spoke:

“It’s real good of you to go with Mac. I couldn’t send him out by himself, as you might say, for Sinapis as a companion is no better than a dog. The boy isn’t right either – swears he is, but I know better. I believe he’s sick. He must go, for I’ve no one else.”

“Old Mac is a good sort,” I said.

“The best in the world, when you can keep him off religion and whisky. He’s fond of preaching, and the other thing. Here come the dogs,” Armstrong went on heartily. “Good-luck to you, good weather, and lots of thanks.”

The assistant-factor, MacDonald, and myself were about to start upon an expedition to the north. Game of every kind had been scarce that season, not a fox came near the fort, even wolves appeared to have deserted us: so we were going to explore the country for signs of the fur-bearers, as we couldn’t place much reliance upon the reports of wandering natives, although these same individuals had lately supplied Armstrong with information which made a journey of investigation necessary. According to them a party of Germans were passing through the country further north, trapping and shooting all the furs they could find, thereby infringing upon the rights of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay.

“There’s no truth in the yarn,” Armstrong had said. “Anyway, it’s like this: if I make a search for these fellows, it will be found that the story is false. If I don’t look for them, it will be true, and I shall hear something about neglect of duty.”

The long sleigh lay upon the glistening snow before the fort, packed with provisions and furs, while Sinapis with a heavy whip attempted to control the team of twenty-four dogs, the finest lot in the country, and the pride of the chief factor’s heart. Well they might be, for the famous breed of sleigh dog, or husky, as the animal is generally named, is well-nigh extinct to-day. These powerful brutes are more like bears than dogs. Their strength and staying powers are enormous, and their ferocity is on a par with their hardiness, which is indeed almost abnormal, as I have driven a team for a week on nothing but a little hard biscuit, with a few scraps of deer pemmican and frozen fish strips once in the twenty-four hours. Yet they have snapped as fiercely and been to all appearance as lusty on the last few miles as at the start.

Sinapis crawled into the back of the sleigh, the long lash curled out, the leaders yelped impatiently and bit each other. The next moment we were gliding along swiftly, enveloped in the smoke-like breath of the dogs, while old Armstrong waved a farewell from the fort. There is nothing half so exhilarating as a good scamper over the northern plains, wrapped up to the nose tip, lying full length along the sleigh, with a score of thoroughbred dogs in front. Away on all sides extended the snow-covered wastes, broken here and there by dark-green fir bluffs, their tresses blue with ice. Not a man, not an animal, nor bird, nor insect could be seen for miles. But what of that? It was glorious to see the pale-blue sky spotted with fragile cirri, to watch the frost dancing around, and to feel the sharp prick of the crystals against the exposed cheeks and nose, and to hear the comfortable swish of the sleigh as it slid along, and the quick panting of the dogs.

That first day we travelled at a great rate, for the snow was solid and fairly even, although at times we would glance with a sudden shock off a hidden point of rock, or grate over a fallen tree trunk which the last sprinkle of snow had managed to cover. At evening we camped well inside a bluff, keeping up a huge fire, which was indeed needed, for our little spirit thermometer marked forty-six below zero when I read it at ten o’clock, and it would sink lower than that before morning.

It was not until we had finished supper, and were bending to light our pipes at the fire, that MacDonald put a suspicion I had been harbouring for the last hour into words.

“Say,” he remarked; “been watching the boy lately?”

Sinapis appeared restless and miserable. He never spoke, moved listlessly, and accomplished his tasks without any show of alacrity, working slowly and heavily, although that was no new thing with him.

I answered MacDonald’s question with another, “What’s wrong with him?”

He snorted impatiently. “Sick, and dead sick, too. He was bad when we started, but wouldn’t own to it, darn him.”

“He’ll be all right to-morrow.”

“That’s a silly thing to say. You know what a flimsy affair an Indian’s constitution is. He’s sick one day, dead the next. Doing his usual chores in the morning, taking his long rest at night. It’s no use kicking back because you don’t want to go on. What we want to do is to face the question.”

“Let’s put him in the sleigh, cover him up, and if he is all right in the morning the better for us. If he isn’t, we’ll have done all we can. You might have been worse off, Mac. If I hadn’t come—”

“If you weren’t here I shouldn’t think twice about it,” he interrupted. “I should hitch up the huskies first thing in the morning, and start to work crossing those tracks we made to-day.”

Unluckily next morning there could be no question about the seriousness of the man’s illness. What the disease was I couldn’t tell; but his strength had gone, his head and body were racked with pains, and altogether he seemed in a bad way. However, we started off north as soon as we had partaken of some food, and made good progress all forenoon. Then evil fortune overtook us. We reached bad country, covered with rocks, and protected upon either side by a deep bank of pines. Here the snow-bed was uneven. The sleigh, instead of gliding over the surface, broke through the crust, while the dogs sank up to their bellies, tugging ineffectually, and filling the air with their short angry barks.

MacDonald and I looked at each other. Anger was visible all over his face, as he shouted sulkily to the dogs, who ceased from their labours willingly enough.

“Just what I told you,” he grumbled. “Directly Sinapis is struck down, this sort of job crops up. We’re going to have a happy day, I tell ye.”

There was no help for it. We lashed on the snowshoes and walked ahead of the dogs, breaking a trail for them. It was hard work, and took all the breath we could spare, so there was little talk until we reached a good camping-place and began to fix up for the night. Luckily the last few miles had been fairly easy, so we looked forward to good going on the morrow. It was worthy of note that during the whole of the day’s journey we had never sighted a living thing.

Sinapis was better, I thought. He was quieter and had stopped groaning. He lay still, and did not appear to notice either of us. We did what we could – little enough – then left him and tried to get to sleep ourselves. The night was milder, if twenty-five below may be called warm, but we were well sheltered by bluffs on every side.

I was beginning to doze when MacDonald hit me in the ribs with the stem of his pipe, and I saw his quaint hairy face near mine.

“Man,” he whispered, “have ye seen the boy?”

“Not for the last hour or two. What’s wrong?” I said.

“Have ye seen his eyes?”

“Get away, Mac,” I muttered.

“I saw his eyes,” he went on, “I waved my hand up and down and they never winked. Man, he’s crazy.”

“Look here, Mac,” I said, “keep your horrors to yourself, and let me get to sleep.”

“Crazy,” he repeated unpityingly. “Knows he’s going to die, and the fear o’ death has crazed his brain because he’s a papist, and knows—”

I put out an arm, pushed him off – I dare say I cursed. MacDonald returned to his own side of the fire, quoted Scripture at me, expressed a wish for a Bible that he might quote some more, and the last thing I heard as he settled down for sleep was a fervent whisper, “Man, I’d give a year of my life for a wee bottle o’ Glenlivet.”

Our luck improved when we made a start in the morning. The bad country was soon left behind, and we scudded over a level bed at high speed, covering a large area of country that day; but we saw no game, only a few snow-birds with a wolf slinking away here and there. It was indeed a barren season. Nor did we discover any tracks of the band of trappers we had come out to look for, so we attributed the story to the imagination of the native brain, although it transpired later that the report was true. The men were never caught; but they quarrelled when nearing the flats of Hudson’s Bay, and the result was that two men, both Russians and not Germans, were picked up by the Indians fearfully hacked with knives about face and body.

About four o’clock that afternoon we were gliding along briskly in the mysterious semi-darkness, when I found that my eyes troubled me. They smarted, and the lids twitched continually. Hanging my arm over the side of the sleigh, I caught up some snow to rub on my face. While raising my hand I happened to glance towards stolid old MacDonald, and to my amazement discovered a pink halo round his grizzled head. Turning my throbbing eyes towards the dogs, I noticed a soft pink radiance glowing round their bodies, while the steam-like breath pouring from their mouths floated away in roseate clouds, which to a poetical mind might have suggested an effect of sunrise.

While I was wondering at the meaning of this phenomenon, MacDonald turned his head, and gazed at me solemnly with eyes that blinked and twitched like mine.

“Hello, Angel!” he exclaimed, without a vestige of humour in his voice.

I stared at him, and he continued, “I don’t want to flatter ye, but you’d make a good Catholic idol just now. There’s a red ring round your head any saint might envy.”

“You’ve got one too,” I said.

“Darn the lights, anyway,” he muttered. “’Tis bad enough to see ’em when you’re snug at home. When they strike ye out here ’tis death for somebody. He’s going.”

“Keep off that,” I muttered.

“If Sinapis isn’t going off, one of us is. I guess it’s better him than you or me.”

The long lash curled savagely over the brightly coloured backs of the dogs, and we bounded along in silence, while I fixed my eyes upon a thick clump of firs which looked as though they were on fire. Presently a gruff exclamation at my shoulder made me start.

“Here they come – the devil’s lights!”

I put my head back and glanced at the sky. Lurid tongues were creeping up from the magnetic north, and advancing with slow movements across the sky. They resembled flames of fire seen indistinctly through a cloud of smoke. On the opposite side flaming spindles shot upward in a clear sky, as though striking at invisible foes with their spear-like tips; and at the same time I heard a low moaning, like wind round a street corner on a wintry night. Otherwise there was silence, awful silence. Gradually the red hue became more pronounced, the air grew ghastly, figures seemed to creep by, the snow around might have marked the scene of a great carnage. MacDonald’s face looked livid and awesome. I glanced once at the still countenance of Sinapis, but recoiled at the sight.

Few words passed, and presently we reached the pine bluff we had long been heading for. A cloud of fire crested the summit. We began to prepare our camp, between the slender columns stretching in lengthy corridors on each side, faintly illumined, as if to receive us, with the lambent lights.

We examined Sinapis, and one look passed between us. Amateur doctor that I was, a glance was enough to convince me the man was worse. His limbs were hot and covered with red spots. With his feeble arms he endeavoured to toss off the furs; and if he could suffer from an excess of heat in that atmosphere, I knew he must be sick indeed. I looked at the thermometer, feeling that the temperature must be nearing an exceptional point. The spirits were skulking away at the bottom, and the index marked sixty-one. I returned with the intelligence to my companion.

“Ninety-three degrees of frost, Mac.”

He raised his shaggy head. “Well, Angel, that’s about the limit. A few more degrees and we shall be smothered. I knew it was something low. The air strikes like fire.”

“A steady blow of wind now—”

“And we should be shrivelled up like dead leaves.”

We made four large fires at a slight distance from each other. For a couple of hours we toiled with axe and saw, felling wood to keep us in fuel for the night; but every other minute we had to pause and gasp for breath. Meantime the heavens were growing scarlet; the snow might have been soaked in blood; my companion’s face grew more corpse-like. Load after load of resinous wood we carried to the camp, then settled down to nibble at what food we could manage to thaw. After an altogether insufficient meal, we sat down opposite each other to enjoy our only pleasure, a good pipeful of tobacco. The dogs gathered round, snapping at one another, lying so close to the fires that the air soon became filled with the odour of singeing fur, and we had to drive them back, lest they should place us in a quandary by committing suicide. Hard by lay Sinapis, wrapped up in the sleigh, never moving nor speaking.

Nature has especially ordained that when the temperature reaches an extremely low point two things may not happen: a fire cannot burn dully, nor may the wind blow. Were it otherwise human existence in the far north would often be impossible .

We smoked silently for an hour or more, only rising at intervals for fresh supplies of wood. The mysterious atmosphere bathed us in its red waves; the fiery cones and spindles above kept on darting and flashing; the shuddering shadows crept upon the trees. It was a remarkable night indeed.

Presently MacDonald drew the last mouthful of smoke from his pipe. As he drew the little canvas bag out of his pocket – in winter he always carried his tobacco cut – he eyed me in a solemn fashion, and said, “Do ye see, Angel?”

“I’m not blind,” I answered a bit testily, for I looked upon him as a superstitious old fool.

“Do ye hear, Angel?” he continued in the same monotonous voice.

“Quit calling me Angel!” I shouted. “And talk of something else. It’s nothing but the aurora.”

“That’s what they say. What makes the sounds? What makes the red lights jump around in the sky? What makes the shadows we see crawling around? Men whose heads are too big for their bodies talk about electricity and terrestrial magnetism, and clever enough they think themselves I have no doubt. But get ’em together, drive ’em in a bunch, and ask ’em straight what is electricity an’ what is terrestrial magnetism? You’ll see them sit down and suck their thumbs.”

“There are wiser men than us, Mac.”

“There’s a clever and common-sense way of looking at things,” he said stubbornly. “One man wants to find the height of a wall. He takes a sheet of paper and a lot of fiddling tools, draws pictures, and decorates them with half the letters in the alphabet. At last he works out a sort of answer, mostly wrong. Another man slips to the top of the wall, drops a plumb-line down, makes a knot in the line, and measures it. One’s the clever way of finding the height of that wall and the other is the natural way. Give me the last.”

“What’s your idea, then, about the red lights?”

“The devil fixes ’em up to scare us lonely fellows, and to warn us there’s trouble coming.”

“Why do we only see them out here? Why only in the extreme cold?”

“Don’t you try and corner the devil. He uses different methods to scare folk in other places. The red lights do show further south, and harm always comes with them. Sinapis will die.”

“Because the aurora happens to be red once in a way, it’s no reason why a man should die.”

“Two years ago there was just such another night, the sky on fire and the snow bloody,” went on MacDonald, in his unhappiest voice. “Factor Robinson went out on the ice of the bay to look for his little dog, which had strayed from the fort. We picked him up next morning, smashed by a bear, so that his own mother wouldn’t ha’ known him. I helped to carry him back, took the shoulders, I did, and his head was like a rotten apple some one had set their foot on. Kept touching my legs, too. Man, I had to shut my eyes.”

I tried to laugh his words away, but only a dry sound came from my throat. No man could have been light-hearted amid such weird surroundings.

“This night, further south, no electric instruments will obey the hand of any man,” my cheerful comrade rambled on. “Telephones, telegraphs, all the rest of ’em, won’t work, or will perform on their own account. Aye, on nights of this sort messages come along the wires, and the operators are called up by hands which have no flesh on ’em.”

“Free electricity has powers of which we know little,” I said.

“There ye are again. You’re welcome to your notion and all you can make of it. Here’s a little story, and if it isn’t true, may my tongue be frost-bitten. In a small town, a year or two agone, the red lights came along, and all the telegraph stations were closed. Late at night one of the operators went into the office for something, and while there the signal sounded. He stepped up and prepared to take down the message. The needle ticked away, only one word was transmitted, only one word, Angel. They say he fainted right off.”

“What was it?”

“Death. Just that one word. Three months later it came for him.”

“You’ve got queer notions, Mac.”

“Maybe, Angel. There are queerer round us. I remember a fellow telling me once how, when the lights were bad, he switched on his telephone and listened. He wasn’t a chap of powerful imagination, but he fairly made me shiver when he described how he heard the things twisting and turning round the wire outside, whispering and chattering, and groaning—”

“Quit it, Mac,” I interrupted. “If you haven’t got anything better to talk about, let’s sit quiet.”

He bent to tuck the buffalo robe beneath his knees. That moment I heard a sound, a movement. We looked up together, and saw Sinapis leap out of the sleigh and dash across the snow with the wild motions of a maniac: this man whom we supposed was unconscious and too weak to lift his head – here he was running like an athlete, a man hunted by death, and looking for a place to hide himself. He had been a trapper of beasts, a hunter, all his life, and now he was running with the strength lent him by madness, running from the grisly trapper who sought his life.

“Man!” groaned MacDonald. “I wish it warn’t so lonesome.”

“You’re scared, Mac?” I said hoarsely.

“Aye,” he said. “I’ve got it down my back. Same with you,” he shouted. “If it warn’t for the red lights, your face would be as white as pudding. You ha’ your eyes shut.”

“If I could shut them, I would,” was my answer. “He’ll never get out o’ sight. He’ll run and run all night, and we’ll sit and watch. Man, I’d like a good black British night.”

Sinapis ran on, and as I gazed, unable to remove my eyes, his direction changed, and his motion became parallel with us; he seemed to be coming back, but it was not so; he passed, giving us a wide berth, and sped on, old MacDonald’s head following his course, sheep-like. We perceived he was running in a circle of which we formed the centre.

“Run out and catch hold of him. I’ll see him running to the end of my days,” MacDonald whispered.

I shuddered, but did not move.

“We were angels a while ago, church-window paintings wi’ holy colours round our heads. Now we’re devils. Who was that fellow who went to hell and saw the papists burn?”

“Don’t know,” I muttered, never having heard of Dante in those days; and I was also angry, being myself a Catholic – as was Sinapis – and I did not like MacDonald’s sneers at my religion.

“Bunyan or Gulliver; some such name,” he rambled on. “If ever I go back to Tobermorey, I’ll tell ’em I’ve been there, too.”

Again the Indian approached us, on another and smaller circle, and again he passed, but his speed was decreasing. We thought his strength was failing, but it was not that altogether. He went on describing circles, each drawing him nearer to us, and presently he fell on the snow and began to crawl.

“Played out,” muttered MacDonald.

“Come on, Mac,” I said, when I saw the poor wretch beginning to describe another circle on his hands and knees.

“Bide a wee. My breath ain’t easy.”

A few more minutes passed, then I shook off the cold and the terror of the ghastly lights, crossed to MacDonald’s side, and heaved him up. He came to his feet with as many groans as a dying man; together we crossed the snow and secured the Indian; but we let him go again and gasped.

Before leaving the sleigh, some mood of madness had provoked him to tear off his socks and moccasins; and he had been running over that red snow – I do not know how long – with bare feet.

He made no resistance. We carried him to the sleigh and wrapped him up, averting our eyes from those wax-like feet, then returned to our sleeping-bags by the fire, glancing across at each other, afraid to speak for some time; but I heard a lot of gulping going on, and at last a queer hoarse voice, “Man, you’re a Christian, and I used to be. Shall we put a bullet through his head? What’s the sin, when ’tis a kindness?”

“Quit it, Mac,” I said; and he put his head down and took to his pipe again.

We could do nothing for Sinapis; only sit there and doze and wait for him to die. My eyes closed after a time, and I felt myself nodding, almost overbalancing. Suddenly I became wide awake, with a wild shudder, for I imagined something was leaning over, reaching out great hands to strangle me. I saw the red lights, and my excited imagination made me believe I saw also luminous faces revolving in one of those hideous circles, gradually advancing towards me with hollow eyes and bleeding jaws. I thought of Indian legends which I had laughed at when the sun was shining and Nature had been normal; and then I heard a low, dull, scraping sound which woke me up.

MacDonald had heard it too, but was not frightened. He wagged his head and grinned across the fire. He was nearer the sleigh than I was, and I supposed he could see what was going on.

“When a man’s dying he gets a child again,” he muttered. “The boy’s having a game. He’s sawing a bit of wood.”

Neither of us wondered what was taking place in that wild, unhappy mind, struggling against its destiny of death, what agony was there, what love of life and home. He was only an Indian; we looked upon him rather as a dog, and were sorry he was about to die, chiefly because it would inconvenience us.

“I was fond of sawing a bit of wood when I was a youngster,” MacDonald murmured lazily. “Specially if ’twas the Sabbath. I’d get father’s hand-saw and scrape for an hour at some log, and call myself a mighty fine carpenter when I saw what a pile of sawdust I was making. Eh, man, it was good to be a kiddie.”

He went on murmuring a little, and as I watched his lips something appeared to cross my eyesight and strike MacDonald on the head. It was not my fancy, for he shouted, “The boy’s thrown a chunk of wood at me.” Then he yelled, “It’s a moccasin”; and the next instant started up and lurched towards me blubbering.

“Man!” he panted. “Take it away. It moves! Eh, man, it’s a dead lump. He threw it away like an old boot. Take it away – my stomach’s gone. Eh, man, man!”

I saw the thing lying in the light of the fire with the toes pointing towards it. Sinapis could have felt nothing while he sawed, because all feeling had been frozen out, and yet it was horrible – there. I could not move with MacDonald hanging to me; I dreaded the idea of touching the thing; but two of the dogs made for it, sniffing, one quicker than the other carried it away, and – we saw it no more.

MacDonald was like an hysterical girl. I made him lie down, covered him over, then went to the side of the sleigh, looking down upon the sick man, but not at his feet. He had fallen back, the mad strength had given out at last, he was breathing with difficulty, and still struggling, not only against madness and disease, but, as I could not help thinking, for I was more than a little upset, he was still striving to avoid the clutches of some invisible power, other than death, which hovered above his resting- place.

I sat down again, while MacDonald’s groans died gradually away. I never slept. I nodded dreamily, all the time conscious of my companion’s terrified eyes peering at me over the bowl of his pipe, through a continually rising cloud of smoke. Nothing could have frightened MacDonald from his pipe. He was a hard smoker, and used to say the only thing he had against sleep was that it deprived a man of his tobacco. I remained conscious of what was taking place around, and I perceived that whiteness was gradually returning to the snow and the fire was dying out of the sky. Luminous clouds, with swords of light flashing round the edges, moved slowly up; streamers quivered in the north, lengthening or shortening as the whim seized them. Falling back and resting my head against a pile of wood, I watched the strange forms, which were never for a moment at rest, hurrying always from one side to another, until it occurred to me that the prevailing movement was that of descent. These cloud spirits in their diaphanous robes of light, were inclined to leave the sky vault, to drop down towards us, to wrap us in their fleecy raiment, and carry us away to that land beyond the ice mountains, towards which men are always struggling, which they never have reached.

I had laughed, before that night, at the foolishness of the Indians. When these lights are bright, they will creep from their tents, uplift their arms towards the descending masses, cry aloud, then hurriedly re-seek the partial shelter of their homes. Why? Because at the sound of the human voice the descending motion ceases. The lights break up, scatter and flee away to all parts of the heavens, removing themselves until the atmosphere ceases to vibrate with the echo of the voice. Then they steal down once more, flock together in a ghostly band, and begin again to drop towards the brown tents.

“Should we not do this,” says the native, “should we refrain from shouting with our voices, the spirits would descend, draw us away, and bear us to the land of the unmelting snow; for spirits drink the blood of mortals.”

Wild thoughts such as these coursed through my brain as I lay in a half somnolent state. The luminous clouds were descending with steady movements. They appeared larger, and a fire might now be perceived burning within the heart of each. Down, still down, nearer and closer, until my blinking eyes discovered long attenuated limbs, loosely robed, with hooked, blood-stained extremities working towards their prey. Still down, and the cloak fell aside. Hideous faces peered forth, malignant eyes revolving like red-hot wheels, huge mouths with gruesome fangs gnashing for a victim. But no other features, except ears, long and pointed, held erect for sounds of human life. I struggled to free myself, but an unseen power held me chained. It was the devil’s hunt, and these were his hounds. They were in full cry and we were the quarry. But which was it to be? It must be the one who failed to send the cry ringing forth into the night.

Again I struggled, still the hand crushed me to the icy ground. MacDonald was bending over me, a pitying smile upon his face, on his lips the words:

“So, you are the chosen. Well, I am sorry; but I warned you against the death lights. You see, they have proved too strong, after all.”

There my dream was broken by a cry. I started up with dry throat, my body shivering with cold and the horror of the vision. As I dragged myself up, those grim lights darted swiftly away, and the next second were hurrying across the heavens, whispering in triumph, as though they had succeeded in their quest and were not returning empty-handed.

I heard MacDonald’s voice, but when I turned, my fear came back.

“What is it, Mac? Did I scare you?”

“You!” he cried, in a high-pitched voice. “How could ye scare any one, lying dead asleep?”

“Didn’t I cry out?”

“You never made a sound. He did. He shouted one word.”

“What?”

“Mascha – go away! A nice thing to say with his last breath.”

“His last breath?”

“Man, look at him!” he cried fiercely. “Don’t lie there. Go and look at the boy.”

I rose, though my knees shook. I made my way to the side of the sleigh, through a ring of snoring dogs. I bent over the side, and looked upon the brown face which stared up surrounded by a frost-covered pile of furs.

Sinapis was dead.

Morning came at last, the sun glittered upon the snow plains, dispelling the unnatural colours of the night. As the day was only of a few hours’ duration we had to make the most of it. When it was time for departure, we came to a disagreement concerning the disposal of the body. We had stripped away the furs, applying them to our own use, and the figure lay beneath the pines, stretched out straight and stiff, frozen by the inexorable cold into a mass as solid as a block of marble. I had touched the dark face with the tip of an unprotected finger, scraping away a line of ice-crystals, and in doing so froze the skin with that contact against the inanimate stone – I could not call it flesh.

MacDonald, superstitious to the end of his nails, though brave enough now that it was day, averred that he would not travel in such ghastly company. On the other side, I declared it would be an act of wickedness to leave the body behind, seeing that Sinapis had been a Christian, and therefore deserved a proper burial. There happened to be a priest near the fort, and as the body would keep for ever in that temperature, I argued that it was our duty to take it back. But MacDonald waxed wrathful.

“Plant him in the snow right here, and have done with it.”

“What’s left of Sinapis is going back with us, if only for the sake of satisfying Armstrong. So it’s no good you talking,” I said firmly.

At length, being Britishers, we compromised. The body was to follow us, lashed upon a little sleigh, which we improvised out of pine branches and attached to the back of our own. Even so MacDonald was uncomfortable, and continually glanced over his shoulder to satisfy himself that the body was, as he expressed it, “keeping dead.”

During that short day we travelled swiftly over the dusty snow, approaching our journey’s limit. Still we saw scarcely any game, although wolves and foxes grew more plentiful; nor could we discover any mark of moccasin, no trellis-work pattern where the snowshoe had pressed, no parallel grooves where runners had passed. Onward we swept towards the endless ice-fields, swifter as afternoon grew, for the bed was solid; and along our trail bounded the stone-like image of the frozen man.

That night we encamped in the open. At least, there were banks of firs on all sides as wind breaks, but we made our fire in a space at the bottom of a slight dip, which we found to be natural and not a freak of the snow. The first thing was to isolate ourselves from our companion, so we unlashed the figure, dragged it over the ridge, and left it stiffly stretched upon its bier of pine branches in the valley beyond, out of sight, yet not more than seventy-five yards away. We had supper, commenced our tobacco and conversation, the latter of which did not continue long, since we had little of a pleasant nature to talk about, and were both tired.

A more beautiful sight I have rarely witnessed than the calm splendour of that night. White light poured over the dark summits of the pines, making their silvery tresses flash like a woman’s hair with diamonds in it. When the great moon appeared, with a stately movement, the snow plains looked as soft and warm as a bed of feathers, and, opposite, the shivering arch of the aurora was a thing of beauty, not, as on the former night, a thing of horror. Silver streamers darted from the arch, illumining the sky with narrow bands; and countless spindles, dwindling away to nothingness, moved slowly, lengthening and shortening, one springing from the side of another.

I lay in a fine drowsy comfort, wrapped up to the eyes, in the sleigh. I heard the dogs snarling. I could see MacDonald endeavouring to clear the stem of his pipe, which was blocked, and smiled lazily when I perceived his lips moving, as he silently cursed his best friend. I watched the frost crystals dancing joyously everywhere. I followed the course of sparks carried from the keenly burning fire, and regretfully considered that I might have to bestir myself in an hour or so to haul in more fuel. There was not a breath of wind. I watched the tops of the pines for ten minutes together, in the hope of seeing some motion, but I could not declare I ever saw one stir an inch. I might have been gazing upon a panorama.

My brain was active, and passed rapidly from one subject to another. I wondered how many men in the course of the world’s history had crossed the spot where we then rested. I tried to imagine the surroundings when this inhospitable land was a tropical country, infested by monsters now nothing more than skeletons, and tried to guess what the next change would be, when men had dug up all the vegetation of the coal period. My next idea was to guess at the nearest human beings. There would be Esquimaux along the bay, perhaps two hundred miles east by north, but closer might probably be found a wandering band of Swampy Crees. Finally I spared a thought for the silent figure in the valley. I had trusted Sinapis, for he was somewhat of an exception to the rule that a Christian Indian is sure to be an unprincipled rogue. He was an excellent hunter, and more than once had led me along the fresh trail of the moose; he was a good servant, rarely shirking his duties unless liquor came in his way. Now he had finished his life in the remote north, very far from cities and learning: he had been dragged into the vortex of the unknown: perhaps at that moment he knew of more mysteries than the wisest of us have ever dared to guess at.

It was not wonderful, in such a place, at such a time, that my last thoughts should turn towards sentiment, as I sank imperceptibly into slumber, but I am certain this insensibility was of short duration, and of the nature of a dog sleep, for my senses were active, and alive to every sound or motion.

So I became presently convinced that I had for some little time been listening to a scuffling noise, probably at no great distance, although in that abnormally clear atmosphere a sound would travel for miles. The moon was well up in the heavens, and looked down upon us coldly. An unearthly cry certainly rang in my ears; then a shadow fell upon the snow. I looked up and saw a tawny owl, with big horns and round eyes. He wheeled down, flapped his great wings, and glided away.

I was half awake only, yet there surely were sounds in the valley adjoining. Bodies in motion, pattering of feet upon crisp snow, stealthy glidings and whisperings. I pulled myself upright to listen more intently. And, as I did so, an awful cry burst forth, rending the still night air like a trumpet blast, every syllable of the message beating with accompanying echo in my ears:

“Siphaytay! mascha!”

The silence that followed was worse than the voice. I shook like a man with ague, my teeth went chattering together, my heart thumped furiously. I heard a gasp, as though some one was choking. Then I managed to look round at MacDonald.

His face was all manner of colours, and his hands were beating together in a fashion that might have been ludicrous at any other time. I could no longer doubt that those words had been spoken, or rather shouted, in appeal to us; and who could have given them utterance except the grim figure of the frozen man?

It was no use trembling there, waiting for the cry to be repeated; but it is a curious fact that when a man is really frightened he imagines himself safer while he remains quiescent. The act of motion suggests a challenging of unseen powers. However, I spoke, though there was a tremor in my voice which had a savour of cowardice.

“You heard, Mac?”

It was a foolish remark, but it opened a way between us.

He came shambling towards me, on hands and knees, grabbing hold of my arm when he reached the side of the sleigh.

“I told ye ’twould be bad travelling wi’ that. I knew the boy wouldn’t rest. He’ll be running now, running round and round.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“How can a body frozen through and through scream out? ’Twas his voice, but scared and crazy. Mascha was his last word. He said it because he was afraid to die.”

“His body is in danger.” I tumbled out of the sleigh. “Come, Mac, we must see what he wants. He was calling to us. He was telling them to leave his body alone.”

“Telling who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps he’s not dead. Perhaps the frost is keeping his – what do you papists call it?”

“His soul from departing.”

“Aye, something that way.”

“We must go and look.”

“Let’s keep hold of your arm. The fear isn’t so bad when you halve it up wi” another. The Lord only knows what devilry the boy may be up to.”

We ascended the incline with slow steps, both of us dreading to look down from the top of the ridge.

“’Twas his own voice. Just the voice he used when he was scared,” muttered MacDonald, nearly pulling me down with his weight.

We neared the summit, a few more steps and the ridge would have been surmounted; when, without a note of warning, the cry darted out into the night, and we both sank upon our knees to the ground, shivering, awe-struck:

“Siphaytay! mascha!”

“Come away!” wailed MacDonald, catching at my legs as I tottered up, and bringing me down again. “There are things we can’t look at. Come back and hitch up the dogs, and let’s get away. He’s running – I know he’s running.”

I fought with my breath, which was like a flame of fire. “We can stand it now, Mac. We’re ready for it. Another two steps and we shall see.”

I pulled him up, but he didn’t hang to my arm. He clapped both hands to his ears. In this fashion we crossed the ridge, but when I looked down on the valley my courage returned, while the same word fell from the lips of us both:

“Wolves!”

A score or so round the motionless figure of the frozen man, hungrily struggling to tear that marble flesh. One part of the mystery was explained.

“Come away down, Mac,” I cried. “There’s nothing to fear.”

My companion recovered wonderfully when he perceived that the dead man was not running. He raised his great voice, bellowed lustily, and we floundered into the valley, while the animals sullenly dispersed.

Sinapis lay just as we had left him, upon his back, the face, covered with glittering frost, gazing up at the white moon, the scanty garments torn into shreds by the fangs of the wolves. There was nothing to tell us how that cry had been uttered. We could only wonder, as so many had done before us, trying in vain to tear away the veil which hangs between us and the mystery of death.

Each of us took an end of rope, and we retraced our steps to the camp fire dragging the bier and left it not far behind us in a position of safety away from the heat. This task accomplished, we settled in the sleigh, tucked ourselves up, and presently MacDonald said, “We’ll make for home first thing, and we won’t take him with us.”

I had weakened in my resolution. “Perhaps we’d best leave him. We’ll bury him as decently as we can.”

“Aye,” he said. Then there was silence again.

“I’m not religious, though I quote Scripture,” MacDonald confessed. “’Tis a habit merely. I’d like to understand it. ’Twould help a man.”

“It’s beyond us, Mac. Folks used to say the soul of a dead man couldn’t rest unless the body was properly buried. If the wolves had torn Sinapis to pieces, the funeral would never have taken place. They would say that the spirit, which must have been looking after the body, used the power of human speech for the purpose of appealing to us.”

“He never did – not us. He was calling out to any one.”

“Well, it came to the same thing. It told us the body required help, and we were the only ones who could give it.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “Anyway, ’tis no use my dis agreeing, for I’ve not your education.”

This from MacDonald was a great concession.

“There’s nothing to keep us out longer,” I observed.

“We’ll start back in the morning, first thing. Armstrong can do all the talking he likes. The furs have left this district, and as for those trappers, they never did have any existence outside of a lie—”

“Siphaytay! mascha!”

We sprang up with a yell, for this shock was worse than the first. The voice was so close, the tones were so distinct and agonised. During that first moment I felt sure the body must have moved, and, when I turned, gave a gasp of relief at not seeing the awful face of the frozen man at my shoulder. As for MacDonald, I was afraid he had gone off his head, for he danced in front of me, gesticulating wildly.

“O Lord! O Lord! It cut all round me like a whip.”

The scuffling noise came again, but this time accompanied by angry barks and snarls.

Again we found a partial explanation. Now it was the dogs who had made an attack upon the frozen body. As I reached out my hand for the whip, I saw one of the leaders, a tremendous brute, standing upon the dead man’s chest, licking the icy face with his great tongue. The next moment he sprang back with a howl as the thong struck him across the head. A few more strokes, and the rest of the ravenous pack were driven off.

I pulled the frozen man to the side of the sleigh and tumbled him in, unassisted by MacDonald, who refused to approach the mysterious remains. Then I sat down beside it and watched until morning. Better a loss of sleep than any repetition of that horrible cry.

And in the raw red light of the dawn we buried him. Hitching up the dogs, we drove to a thick bluff, south of our encampment. Here we found a snow hill, crested by a lofty dome like a miniature cathedral, with dark rounded columns of pines stretching away in a kind of religious darkness. With our axes we cut a deep hole, laid the frozen man in his resting-place, a strange dark figure in the midst of perfect whiteness, then piled the snow, like inodorous flowers, upon the unquiet body.

Before leaving, I felt it my duty to commend the dead Indian to the safe keeping of Providence as best I could, although I was well aware MacDonald was eyeing me askance and often grunting. When I concluded he muttered, “Man, I can beat that,” flopped down upon the snow, and began to pour forth a long recitation, which, as far as I could make out, was nothing but a rebuke to me and others of my creed, until I became very cold and weary. At length he rose, and said to me proudly, “Never repeated myself. I could have gone on for half an hour.”

We turned from that quiet pine bluff and the dome of snow which protected the remains of Sinapis. Again we glided over the plains to the music of the sleigh bells, but now we were on the homeward trail, travelling at full speed over the dazzling plain, with a cold sun above and loneliness on every side. Home! The word had a pleasant sound after what we had undergone. Even though it was nothing better than a solitary log-built fort in the centre of a frozen land.