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Dracula's Guest

by Bram Stoker · English · Gutenberg #10150 · 325,866 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dracula's Guest

Author: Bram Stoker


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10150]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DRACULA'S GUEST ***

Dracula’s Guest

by Bram Stoker


First published 1914

To MY SON

Contents

 PREFACE
 Dracula’s Guest
 The Judge’s House
 The Squaw
 The Secret of the Growing Gold
 The Gipsy Prophecy
 The Coming of Abel Behenna
 The Burial of the Rats
 A Dream of Red Hands
 Crooken Sands




PREFACE


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unpublished episode from _Dracula_.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

FLORENCE BRAM STOKER




Dracula’s Guest


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

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

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

“Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is unholy?” I enquired.

“The village.”

“Then there is a village?”

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

“There was.”

“Where is it now?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
IN STYRIA
SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
1801

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

“The dead travel fast.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, have you found him?”

The reply rang out hurriedly:

“No! no! Come away quick—quick! This is no place to stay, and on this
of all nights!”

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

“It—it—indeed!” gibbered one, whose wits had plainly given out for the
moment.

“A wolf—and yet not a wolf!” another put in shudderingly.

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

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

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

The officer looked at my throat and replied:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The young officer answered calmly: “I said a dog.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But how did you know I was lost?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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




The Judge’s House


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you mean? Pon my word I don’t understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The rat always went up the rope of the alarm bell?”

“Always.”

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

“No!”

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

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

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

“Oh, Doctor, what do you mean? What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Squaw


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

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

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

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

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

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

As I joined him, he said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh no! no!” said Amelia. “It is too terrible!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




The Secret of the Growing Gold


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why are you here? You’re dead and buried.”

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

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

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

“Did he marry you?”

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

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

“Where are you going?” demanded her brother.

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

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

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

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

“What is it, Geoffrey? What dost thou?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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




The Gipsy Prophecy


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have to cross the gipsy’s hand with gold.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your hand must be crossed with gold.”

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

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

“Have you a strong will—have you a true heart that can be brave for one
you love?”

“I hope so; but I am afraid I have not vanity enough to say ‘yes’.”

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

“Yes,” emphatically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Amen!” said Gerald.

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

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

“Go on!” said Joshua, smiling. Gerald was silent.

“Must I speak plainer?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you mean?”

“Well, not tell your wife. It might alarm her.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Go on, dear; I am listening.”

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

“I told you,” said Gerald. “You don’t know them as well as I do.”

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

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

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

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

“What is your plan?” asked Gerald.

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

“Capital. May I go with you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you mean to say that _you_ have done it?”

She broke in, “Oh, Joshua, I was so afraid.”

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

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

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

He ran into the drawing-room.

“Where are you going?” almost screamed Mary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joshua bent over and kissed the wounded hand.




The Coming of Abel Behenna


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ye two men, ye’re both in love with my Sarah!”

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

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

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

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

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

Abel broke the silence:

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

“Are ye afraid of the hazard?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” said Eric.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean, Eric? You are mad!”

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

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

“For a year!” added Eric, quickly, “that’s the bargain.”

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

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

“I’ll help you none,” said Eric, “so help me God!”

“It was God helped me,” said Abel simply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He hasn’t broken it yet!” Eric ground his teeth with anger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Devil’s help! Devil’s faith! Devil’s price!”




The Burial of the Rats


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She bent over the ring for a moment, her face quite concealed as though
examining it. The old man looked straight out of the front of the
shanty before him, at the same time fumbling in his pockets and
producing a screw of tobacco in a paper and a pipe, which he proceeded
to fill. I took advantage of the pause and the momentary rest from the
searching eyes on my face to look carefully round the place, now dim
and shadowy in the gloaming. There still lay all the heaps of varied
reeking f

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