The Man from Archangel, and Other Tales of Adventure

by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #34797 · 393,643 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Man from Archangel, and Other Tales of Adventure

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Release date: December 31, 2010 [eBook #34797]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL, AND OTHER TALES OF ADVENTURE ***

Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Mary Meehan and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net

THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL

_and Other Tales of Adventure_

A. CONAN DOYLE

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

TALES OF ADVENTURE

I DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE

II THE SURGEON OF GASTER FELL

III BORROWED SCENES

IV THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL

V THE GREAT BROWN-PERICORD MOTOR

VI THE SEALED ROOM

TALES OF MEDICAL LIFE

VII A PHYSIOLOGIST'S WIFE

VIII BEHIND THE TIMES

IX HIS FIRST OPERATION

X THE THIRD GENERATION

XI THE CURSE OF EVE

XII A MEDICAL DOCUMENT

XIII THE SURGEON TALKS

XIV THE DOCTORS OF HOYLAND

XV CRABBE'S PRACTICE

TALES OF ADVENTURE

THE DEBUT OF BIMBASHI JOYCE

It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a
flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at
last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a
turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had engulfed Hicks's army,
swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled behind the British forces as they
retired down the river, and finally cast up a spray of raiding parties
as far north as Assouan. Then it found other channels to east and to
west, to Central Africa and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on the
side of Egypt. For ten years there ensued a lull, during which the
frontier garrisons looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola.
Behind the violet mists which draped them, lay a land of blood and
horror. From time to time some adventurer went south towards those
haze-girt mountains, tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none ever
returned. Once a mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman, mad with
thirst and fear, made their way to the lines. They were the only exports
of that country of darkness. Sometimes the sunset would turn those
distant mists into a bank of crimson, and the dark mountains would rise
from that sinister reek like islands in a sea of blood. It seemed a grim
symbol in the southern heaven when seen from the fort-capped hills by
Wady Halfa.

Ten years of lust in Khartoum, ten years of silent work in Cairo, and
then all was ready, and it was time for civilisation to take a trip
south once more, travelling, as her wont is, in an armoured train.
Everything was ready, down to the last pack-saddle of the last camel,
and yet no one suspected it, for an unconstitutional Government has its
advantages. A great administrator had argued, and managed, and cajoled;
a great soldier had organised and planned, and made piastres do the work
of pounds. And then one night these two master spirits met and clasped
hands, and the soldier vanished away upon some business of his own. And
just at that very time Bimbashi Hilary Joyce, seconded from the Royal
Mallow Fusiliers, and temporarily attached to the Ninth Soudanese, made
his first appearance in Cairo.

Napoleon had said, and Hilary Joyce had noted, that great reputations
are only to be made in the East. Here he was in the East with four tin
cases of baggage, a Wilkinson sword, a Bond's slug-throwing pistol, and
a copy of _Green's Introduction to the Study of Arabic_. With such a
start, and the blood of youth running hot in his veins, everything
seemed easy. He was a little frightened of the General, he had heard
stories of his sternness to young officers, but with tact and suavity he
hoped for the best. So, leaving his effects at Shepheard's Hotel, he
reported himself at headquarters.

It was not the General, but the head of the Intelligence Department who
received him, the Chief being still absent upon that business which had
called him. Hilary Joyce found himself in the presence of a short,
thick-set officer, with a gentle voice and a placid expression which
covered a remarkably acute and energetic spirit. With that quiet smile
and guileless manner he had undercut and outwitted the most cunning of
Orientals. He stood, a cigarette between his fingers, looking at the
new-comer.

"I heard that you had come. Sorry the Chief isn't here to see you. Gone
up to the frontier, you know."

"My regiment is at Wady Halfa. I suppose, sir, that I should report
myself there at once?"

"No; I was to give you your orders." He led the way to a map upon the
wall, and pointed with the end of his cigarette. "You see this place.
It's the Oasis of Kurkur--a little quiet, I am afraid, but excellent
air. You are to get out there as quick as possible. You'll find a
company of the Ninth, and half a squadron of cavalry. You will be in
command."

Hilary Joyce looked at the name, printed at the intersection of two
black lines, without another dot upon the map for several inches round
it.

"A village, sir?"

"No, a well. Not very good water, I'm afraid, but you soon get
accustomed to natron. It's an important post, as being at the junction
of two caravan routes. All routes are closed now, of course, but still
you never know who _might_ come along them."

"We are there, I presume, to prevent raiding?"

"Well, between you and me, there's really nothing to raid. You are there
to intercept messengers. They must call at the wells. Of course you have
only just come out, but you probably understand already enough about the
conditions of this country to know that there is a great deal of
disaffection about, and that the Khalifa is likely to try and keep in
touch with his adherents. Then, again, Senoussi lives up that way"--he
waved his cigarette to the westward--"the Khalifa might send a message
to him along that route. Anyhow, your duty is to arrest every one coming
along, and get some account of him before you let him go. You don't talk
Arabic, I suppose?"

"I am learning, sir."

"Well, well, you'll have time enough for study there. And you'll have a
native officer, Ali something or other, who speaks English, and can
interpret for you. Well, good-bye--I'll tell the Chief that you reported
yourself. Get on to your post now as quickly as you can."

Railway to Baliani, the post-boat to Assouan, and then two days on a
camel in the Libyan Desert, with an Ababdeh guide, and three
baggage-camels to tie one down to their own exasperating pace. However,
even two and a half miles an hour mount up in time, and at last, on the
third evening, from the blackened slag-heap of a hill which is called
the Jebel Kurkur, Hilary Joyce looked down upon a distant clump of
palms, and thought that this cool patch of green in the midst of the
merciless blacks and yellows was the fairest colour effect that he had
ever seen. An hour later he had ridden into the little camp, the guard
had turned out to salute him, his native subordinate had greeted him in
excellent English, and he had fairly entered into his own.

It was not an exhilarating place for a lengthy residence. There was one
large bowl-shaped, grassy depression sloping down to the three pits of
brown and brackish water. There was the grove of palm trees also,
beautiful to look upon, but exasperating in view of the fact that Nature
has provided her least shady trees on the very spot where shade is
needed most. A single widespread acacia did something to restore the
balance. Here Hilary Joyce slumbered in the heat, and in the cool he
inspected his square-shouldered, spindle-shanked Soudanese, with their
cheery black faces and their funny little pork-pie forage caps. Joyce
was a martinet at drill, and the blacks loved being drilled, so the
Bimbashi was soon popular among them. But one day was exactly like
another. The weather, the view, the employment, the food--everything was
the same. At the end of three weeks he felt that he had been there for
interminable years. And then at last there came something to break the
monotony.

One evening, as the sun was sinking, Hilary Joyce rode slowly down the
old caravan road. It had a fascination for him, this narrow track,
winding among the boulders and curving up the nullahs, for he remembered
how in the map it had gone on and on, stretching away into the unknown
heart of Africa. The countless pads of innumerable camels through many
centuries had beaten it smooth, so that now, unused and deserted, it
still wound away, the strangest of roads, a foot broad, and perhaps two
thousand miles in length. Joyce wondered as he rode how long it was
since any traveller had journeyed up it from the south, and then he
raised his eyes, and there was a man coming along the path.

For an instant Joyce thought that it might be one of his own men, but a
second glance assured him that this could not be so. The stranger was
dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab, and not in the close-fitting
khaki of a soldier. He was very tall, and a high turban made him seem
gigantic. He strode swiftly along, with head erect, and the bearing of a
man who knows no fear.

Who could he be, this formidable giant coming out of the unknown? The
percursor possibly of a horde of savage spearmen. And where could he
have walked from? The nearest well was a long hundred miles down the
track. At any rate the frontier post of Kurkur could not afford to
receive casual visitors. Hilary Joyce whisked round his horse, galloped
into camp, and gave the alarm. Then, with twenty horsemen at his back,
he rode out again to reconnoitre.

The man was still coming on in spite of these hostile preparations. For
an instant he had hesitated when first he saw the cavalry, but escape
was out of the question, and he advanced with the air of one who makes
the best of a bad job. He made no resistance, and said nothing when the
hands of two troopers clutched at his shoulders, but walked quietly
between their horses into camp. Shortly afterwards the patrols came in
again. There were no signs of any Dervishes. The man was alone. A
splendid trotting camel had been found lying dead a little way down the
track. The mystery of the stranger's arrival was explained. But why, and
whence, and whither?--these were questions for which a zealous officer
must find an answer.

Hilary Joyce was disappointed that there were no Dervishes. It would
have been a great start for him in the Egyptian army had he fought a
little action on his own account. But even as it was, he had a rare
chance of impressing the authorities. He would love to show his capacity
to the head of the Intelligence, and even more to that grim Chief who
never forgot what was smart, or forgave what was slack. The prisoner's
dress and bearing showed that he was of importance. Mean men do not ride
pure-bred trotting camels. Joyce sponged his head with cold water, drank
a cup of strong coffee, put on an imposing official tarboosh instead of
his sun-helmet, and formed himself into a court of inquiry and judgment
under the acacia tree.

He would have liked his people to have seen him now, with his two black
orderlies in waiting, and his Egyptian native officer at his side. He
sat behind a camp-table, and the prisoner, strongly guarded, was led up
to him. The man was a handsome fellow, with bold grey eyes and a long
black beard.

"Why!" cried Joyce, "the rascal is making faces at me."

A curious contraction had passed over the man's features, but so swiftly
that it might have been a nervous twitch. He was now a model of Oriental
gravity.

"Ask him who he is, and what he wants?"

The native officer did so, but the stranger made no reply, save that the
same sharp spasm passed once more over his face.

"Well, I'm blessed!" cried Hilary Joyce. "Of all the impudent
scoundrels! He keeps on winking at me. Who are you, you rascal? Give an
account of yourself! D'ye hear?"

But the tall Arab was as impervious to English as to Arabic. The
Egyptian tried again and again. The prisoner looked at Joyce with his
inscrutable eyes, and occasionally twitched his face at him, but never
opened his mouth. The Bimbashi scratched his head in bewilderment.

"Look here, Mahomet Ali, we've got to get some sense out of this fellow.
You say there are no papers on him?"

"No, sir; we found no papers."

"No clue of any kind?"

"He has come far, sir. A trotting camel does not die easily. He has come
from Dongola, at least."

"Well, we must get him to talk."

"It is possible that he is deaf and dumb."

"Not he. I never saw a man look more all there in my life."

"You might send him across to Assouan."

"And give some one else the credit! No, thank you. This is my bird. But
how are we going to get him to find his tongue?"

The Egyptian's dark eyes skirted the encampment and rested on the cook's
fire.

"Perhaps," said he, "if the Bimbashi thought fit----" He looked at the
prisoner and then at the burning wood.

"No, no, it wouldn't do. No, by Jove, that's going too far."

"A very little might do it."

"No, no. It's all very well here, but it would sound just awful if ever
it got as far as Fleet Street. But, I say," he whispered, "we might
frighten him a bit. There's no harm in that."

"No, sir."

"Tell them to undo the man's galabeeah. Order them to put a horseshoe in
the fire and make it red-hot."

The prisoner watched the proceedings with an air which had more of
amusement than of uneasiness. He never winced as the black sergeant
approached with the glowing shoe held upon two bayonets.

"Will you speak now?" asked the Bimbashi savagely.

The prisoner smiled gently and stroked his beard.

"Oh, chuck the infernal thing away!" cried Joyce, jumping up in a
passion. "There's no use trying to bluff the fellow. He knows we won't
do it. But I _can_ and I _will_ flog him, and you tell him from me that
if he hasn't found his tongue by to-morrow morning, I'll take the skin
off his back as sure as my name's Joyce. Have you said all that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, you can sleep upon it, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it
give you!"

He adjourned the Court, and the prisoner, as imperturbable as ever, was
led away by the guard to his supper of rice and water.

Hilary Joyce was a kind-hearted man, and his own sleep was considerably
disturbed by the prospect of the punishment which he must inflict next
day. He had hopes that the mere sight of the koorbash and the thongs
might prevail over his prisoner's obstinacy. And then, again, he thought
how shocking it would be if the man proved to be really dumb after all.
The possibility shook him so that he had almost determined by daybreak
that he would send the stranger on unhurt to Assouan. And yet what a
tame conclusion it would be to the incident! He lay upon his angareeb
still debating it when the question suddenly and effectively settled
itself. Ali Mahomet rushed into his tent.

"Sir," he cried, "the prisoner is gone!"

"Gone!"

"Yes, sir, and your own best riding camel as well. There is a slit cut
in the tent, and he got away unseen in the early morning."

The Bimbashi acted with all energy. Cavalry rode along every track;
scouts examined the soft sand of the wadys for signs of the fugitive,
but no trace was discovered. The man had utterly disappeared. With a
heavy heart Hilary Joyce wrote an official report of the matter and
forwarded it to Assouan. Five days later there came a curt order from
the Chief that he should report himself there. He feared the worst from
the stern soldier, who spared others as little as he spared himself.

And his worst forebodings were realised. Travel-stained and weary, he
reported himself one night at the General's quarters. Behind a table
piled with papers and strewn with maps the famous soldier and his Chief
of Intelligence were deep in plans and figures. Their greeting was a
cold one.

"I understand, Captain Joyce," said the General, "that you have allowed
a very important prisoner to slip through your fingers."

"I am sorry, sir."

"No doubt. But that will not mend matters. Did you ascertain anything
about him before you lost him?"

"No, sir."

"How was that?"

"I could get nothing out of him, sir."

"Did you try?"

"Yes, sir; I did what I could."

"What did you do?"

"Well, sir, I threatened to use physical force."

"What did he say?"

"He said nothing."

"What was he like?"

"A tall man, sir. Rather a desperate character, I should think."

"Any way by which we could identify him?"

"A long black beard, sir. Grey eyes. And a nervous way of twitching his
face."

"Well, Captain Joyce," said the General, in his stern, inflexible voice,
"I cannot congratulate you upon your first exploit in the Egyptian army.
You are aware that every English officer in this force is a picked man.
I have the whole British army from which to draw. It is necessary,
therefore, that I should insist upon the very highest efficiency. It
would be unfair upon the others to pass over any obvious want of zeal or
intelligence. You are seconded from the Royal Mallows, I understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"I have no doubt that your Colonel will be glad to see you fulfilling
your regimental duties again."

Hilary Joyce's heart was too heavy for words. He was silent.

"I will let you know my final decision to-morrow morning."

Joyce saluted and turned upon his heel.

"You can sleep upon that, you beauty, and a good night's rest may it
give you!"

Joyce turned in bewilderment. Where had those words been used before?
Who was it who had used them?

The General was standing erect. Both he and the Chief of the
Intelligence were laughing. Joyce stared at the tall figure, the erect
bearing, the inscrutable grey eyes.

"Good Lord!" he gasped.

"Well, well, Captain Joyce, we are quits!" said the General, holding out
his hand. "You gave me a bad ten minutes with that infernal red-hot
horseshoe of yours. I've done as much for you. I don't think we can
spare you for the Royal Mallows just yet awhile."

"But, sir; but----!"

"The fewer questions the better, perhaps. But of course it must seem
rather amazing. I had a little private business with the Kabbabish. It
must be done in person. I did it, and came to your post in my return. I
kept on winking at you as a sign that I wanted a word with you alone."

"Yes, yes. I begin to understand."

"I couldn't give it away before all those blacks, or where should I have
been the next time I used my false beard and Arab dress? You put me in a
very awkward position. But at last I had a word alone with your Egyptian
officer, who managed my escape all right."

"He! Mahomet Ali!"

"I ordered him to say nothing. I had a score to settle with you. But we
dine at eight, Captain Joyce. We live plainly here, but I think I can do
you a little better than you did me at Kurkur."

THE SURGEON OF GASTER FELL

I: HOW THE WOMAN CAME TO KIRKBY-MALHOUSE

Bleak and wind-swept is the little town of Kirkby-Malhouse, harsh and
forbidding are the fells upon which it stands. It stretches in a single
line of grey-stone, slate-roofed houses, dotted down the furze-clad
slope of the rolling moor.

In this lonely and secluded village, I, James Upperton, found myself in
the summer of '85. Little as the hamlet had to offer, it contained that
for which I yearned above all things--seclusion and freedom from all
which might distract my mind from the high and weighty subjects which
engaged it. But the inquisitiveness of my landlady made my lodgings
undesirable and I determined to seek new quarters.

As it chanced, I had in one of my rambles come upon an isolated dwelling
in the very heart of these lonely moors, which I at once determined
should be my own. It was a two-roomed cottage, which had once belonged
to some shepherd, but had long been deserted, and was crumbling rapidly
to ruin. In the winter floods, the Gaster Beck, which runs down Gaster
Fell, where the little dwelling stood, had overswept its banks and torn
away a part of the wall. The roof was in ill case, and the scattered
slates lay thick amongst the grass. Yet the main shell of the house
stood firm and true; and it was no great task for me to have all that
was amiss set right.

The two rooms I laid out in a widely different manner--my own tastes are
of a Spartan turn, and the outer chamber was so planned as to accord
with them. An oil-stove by Rippingille of Birmingham furnished me with
the means of cooking; while two great bags, the one of flour, and the
other of potatoes, made me independent of all supplies from without. In
diet I had long been a Pythagorean, so that the scraggy, long-limbed
sheep which browsed upon the wiry grass by the Gaster Beck had little to
fear from their new companion. A nine-gallon cask of oil served me as a
sideboard; while a square table, a deal chair and a truckle-bed
completed the list of my domestic fittings. At the head of my couch hung
two unpainted shelves--the lower for my dishes and cooking utensils, the
upper for the few portraits which took me back to the little that was
pleasant in the long, wearisome toiling for wealth and for pleasure
which had marked the life I had left behind.

If this dwelling-room of mine were plain even to squalor, its poverty
was more than atoned for by the luxury of the chamber which was destined
to serve me as my study. I had ever held that it was best for my mind to
be surrounded by such objects as would be in harmony with the studies
which occupied it, and that the loftiest and most ethereal conditions of
thought are only possible amid surroundings which please the eye and
gratify the senses. The room which I had set apart for my mystic studies
was set forth in a style as gloomy and majestic as the thoughts and
aspirations with which it was to harmonise. Both walls and ceilings were
covered with a paper of the richest and glossiest black, on which was
traced a lurid and arabesque pattern of dead gold. A black velvet
curtain covered the single diamond-paned window; while a thick, yielding
carpet of the same material prevented the sound of my own footfalls, as
I paced backward and forward, from breaking the current of my thought.
Along the cornices ran gold rods, from which depended six pictures, all
of the sombre and imaginative caste, which chimed best with my fancy.

And yet it was destined that ere ever I reached this quiet harbour I
should learn that I was still one of humankind, and that it is an ill
thing to strive to break the bond which binds us to our fellows. It was
but two nights before the date I had fixed upon for my change of
dwelling, when I was conscious of a bustle in the house beneath, with
the bearing of heavy burdens up the creaking stair, and the harsh voice
of my landlady, loud in welcome and protestations of joy. From time to
time, amid the whirl of words, I could hear a gentle and softly
modulated voice, which struck pleasantly upon my ear after the long
weeks during which I had listened only to the rude dialect of the
dalesmen. For an hour I could hear the dialogue beneath--the high voice
and the low, with clatter of cup and clink of spoon, until at last a
light, quick step passed my study door, and I knew that my new
fellow-lodger had sought her room.

On the morning after this incident I was up be-times, as is my wont; but
I was surprised, on glancing from my window, to see that our new inmate
was earlier still. She was walking down the narrow pathway, which
zigzags over the fell--a tall woman, slender, her head sunk upon her
breast, her arms filled with a bristle of wild flowers, which she had
gathered in her morning rambles. The white and pink of her dress, and
the touch of deep red ribbon in her broad drooping hat, formed a
pleasant dash of colour against the dun-tinted landscape. She was some
distance off when I first set eyes upon her, yet I knew that this
wandering woman could be none other than our arrival of last night, for
there was a grace and refinement in her bearing which marked her from
the dwellers of the fells. Even as I watched she passed swiftly and
lightly down the pathway, and turning through the wicket gate, at the
further end of our cottage garden, she seated herself upon the green
bank which faced my window, and strewing her flowers in front of her,
set herself to arrange them.

As she sat there, with the rising sun at her back, and the glow of the
morning spreading like an aureole around her stately and well-poised
head, I could see that she was a woman of extraordinary personal beauty.
Her face was Spanish rather than English in its type--oval, olive, with
black, sparkling eyes, and a sweetly sensitive mouth. From under the
broad straw hat two thick coils of blue-black hair curved down on either
side of her graceful queenly neck. I was surprised, as I watched her, to
see that her shoes and skirt bore witness to a journey rather than to a
mere morning ramble. Her light dress was stained, wet and bedraggled;
while her boots were thick with the yellow soil of the fells. Her face,
too, wore a weary expression, and her young beauty seemed to be clouded
over by the shadow of inward trouble. Even as I watched her, she burst
suddenly into wild weeping, and throwing down her bundle of flowers ran
swiftly into the house.

Distrait as I was and weary of the ways of the world, I was conscious of
a sudden pang of sympathy and grief as I looked upon the spasm of
despair which seemed to convulse this strange and beautiful woman. I
bent to my books, and yet my thoughts would ever turn to her proud
clear-cut face, her weather-stained dress, her drooping head, and the
sorrow which lay in each line and feature of her pensive face.

Mrs. Adams, my landlady, was wont to carry up my frugal breakfast; yet
it was very rarely that I allowed her to break the current of my
thoughts, or to draw my mind by her idle chatter from weightier things.
This morning, however, for once, she found me in a listening mood, and
with little prompting, proceeded to pour into my ears all that she knew
of our beautiful visitor.

"Miss Eva Cameron be her name, sir," she said: "but who she be, or where
she came fra, I know little more than yoursel'. Maybe it was the same
reason that brought her to Kirkby-Malhouse as fetched you there
yoursel', sir."

"Possibly," said I, ignoring the covert question; "but I should hardly
have thought that Kirkby-Malhouse was a place which offered any great
attractions to a young lady."

"Heh, sir!" she cried, "there's the wonder of it. The leddy has just
come fra France; and how her folk come to learn of me is just a wonder.
A week ago, up comes a man to my door--a fine man, sir, and a gentleman,
as one could see with half an eye. 'You are Mrs. Adams,' says he. 'I
engage your rooms for Miss Cameron,' says he. 'She will be here in a
week,' says he; and then off without a word of terms. Last night there
comes the young leddy hersel'--soft-spoken and downcast, with a touch of
the French in her speech. But my sakes, sir! I must away and mak' her
some tea, for she'll feel lonesome-like, poor lamb, when she wakes under
a strange roof."

II: HOW I WENT FORTH TO GASTER FELL

I was still engaged upon my breakfast when I heard the clatter of dishes
and the landlady's footfall as she passed toward her new lodger's room.
An instant afterward she had rushed down the passage and burst in upon
me with uplifted hand and startled eyes. "Lord 'a mercy, sir!" she
cried, "and asking your pardon for troubling you, but I'm feared o' the
young leddy, sir; she is not in her room."

"Why, there she is," said I, standing up and glancing through the
casement. "She has gone back for the flowers she left upon the bank."

"Oh, sir, see her boots and her dress!" cried the landlady wildly. "I
wish her mother was here, sir--I do. Where she has been is more than I
ken, but her bed has not been lain on this night."

"She has felt restless, doubtless, and went for a walk, though the hour
was certainly a strange one."

Mrs. Adams pursed her lip and shook her head. But then as she stood at
the casement, the girl beneath looked smilingly up at her and beckoned
to her with a merry gesture to open the window.

"Have you my tea there?" she asked in a rich, clear voice, with a touch
of the mincing French accent.

"It is in your room, miss."

"Look at my boots, Mrs. Adams!" she cried, thrusting them out from under
her skirt. "These fells of yours are dreadful places--_effroyable_--one
inch, two inch; never have I seen such mud! My dress, too--_voila_!"

"Eh, miss, but you are in a pickle," cried the landlady, as she gazed
down at the bedraggled gown. "But you must be main weary and heavy for
sleep."

"No, no," she answered laughingly, "I care not for sleep. What is sleep?
it is a little death--_voila tout_. But for me to walk, to run, to
breathe the air--that is to live. I was not tired, and so all night I
have explored these fells of Yorkshire."

"Lord 'a mercy, miss, and where did you go?" asked Mrs. Adams.

She waved her hand round in a sweeping gesture which included the whole
western horizon. "There," she cried. "O comme elles sont tristes et
sauvages, ces collines! But I have flowers here. You will give me water,
will you not? They will wither else." She gathered her treasures in her
lap, and a moment later we heard her light, springy footfall upon the
stair.

So she had been out all night, this strange woman. What motive could
have taken her from her snug room on to the bleak, wind-swept hills?
Could it be merely the restlessness, the love of adventure of a young
girl? Or was there, possibly, some deeper meaning in this nocturnal
journey?

Deep as were the mysteries which my studies had taught me to solve, here
was a human problem which for the moment at least was beyond my
comprehension. I had walked out on the moor in the forenoon, and on my
return, as I topped the brow that overlooks the little town, I saw my
fellow-lodger some little distance off amongst the gorse. She had raised
a light easel in front of her, and, with papered board laid across it,
was preparing to paint the magnificent landscape of rock and moor which
stretched away in front of her. As I watched her I saw that she was
looking anxiously to right and left. Close by me a pool of water had
formed in a hollow. Dipping the cup of my pocket-flask into it, I
carried it across to her.

"Miss Cameron, I believe," said I. "I am your fellow-lodger. Upperton is
my name. We must introduce ourselves in these wilds if we are not to be
for ever strangers."

"Oh, then, you live also with Mrs. Adams!" she cried. "I had thought
that there were none but peasants in this strange place."

"I am a visitor, like yourself," I answered. "I am a student, and have
come for quiet and repose, which my studies demand."

"Quiet, indeed!" said she, glancing round at the vast circle of silent
moors, with the one tiny line of grey cottages which sloped down beneath
us.

"And yet not quiet enough," I answered, laughing, "for I have been
forced to move further into the fells for the absolute peace which I
require."

"Have you, then, built a house upon the fells?" she asked, arching her
eyebrows.

"I have, and hope within a few days to occupy it."

"Ah, but that is _triste_," she cried. "And where is it, then, this
house which you have built?"

"It is over yonder," I answered. "See that stream which lies like a
silver band upon the distant moor? It is the Gaster Beck, and it runs
through Gaster Fell."

She started, and turned upon me her great dark, questioning eyes with a
look in which surprise, incredulity, and something akin to horror seemed
to be struggling for mastery.

"And you will live on the Gaster Fell?" she cried.

"So I have planned. But what do you know of Gaster Fell, Miss Cameron?"
I asked. "I had thought that you were a stranger in these parts."

"Indeed, I have never been here before," she answered. "But I have heard
my brother talk of these Yorkshire moors; and, if I mistake not, I have
heard him name this very one as the wildest and most savage of them
all."

"Very likely," said I carelessly. "It is indeed a dreary place."

"Then why live there?" she cried eagerly. "Consider the loneliness, the
barrenness, the want of all comfort and of all aid, should aid be
needed."

"Aid! What aid should be needed on Gaster Fell?"

She looked down and shrugged her shoulders. "Sickness may come in all
places," said she. "If I were a man I do not think I would live alone on
Gaster Fell."

"I have braved worse dangers than that," said I, laughing; "but I fear
that your picture will be spoiled, for the clouds are banking up, and
already I feel a few raindrops."

Indeed, it was high time we were on our way to shelter, for even as I
spoke there came the sudden, steady swish of the shower. Laughing
merrily, my companion threw her light shawl over her head, and, seizing
picture and easel, ran with the lithe grace of a young fawn down the
furze-clad slope, while I followed after with camp-stool and paint-box.

* * * * *

It was the eve of my departure from Kirkby-Malhouse that we sat upon the
green bank in the garden, she with dark, dreamy eyes looking sadly out
over the sombre fells; while I, with a book upon my knee, glanced
covertly at her lovely profile and marvelled to myself how twenty years
of life could have stamped so sad and wistful an expression upon it.

"You have read much," I remarked at last. "Women have opportunities now
such as their mothers never knew. Have you ever thought of going
further--of seeking a course of college or even a learned profession?"

She smiled wearily at the thought.

"I have no aim, no ambition," she said. "My future is black--confused--a
chaos. My life is like to one of these paths upon the fells. You have
seen them, Monsieur Upperton. They are smooth and straight and clear
where they begin; but soon they wind to left and wind to right, and so
mid rocks and crags until they lose themselves in some quagmire. At
Brussels my path was straight; but now, _mon Dieu!_ who is there can
tell me where it leads?"

"It might take no prophet to do that, Miss Cameron," quoth I, with the
fatherly manner which two-score years may show toward one. "If I may
read your life, I would venture to say that you were destined to fulfil
the lot of women--to make some good man happy, and to shed around, in
some wider circle, the pleasure which your society has given me since
first I knew you."

"I will never marry," said she, with a sharp decision, which surprised
and somewhat amused me.

"Not marry--and why?"

A strange look passed over her sensitive features, and she plucked
nervously at the grass on the bank beside her.

"I dare not," said she in a voice that quivered with emotion.

"Dare not?"

"It is not for me. I have other things to do. That path of which I spoke
is one which I must tread alone."

"But this is morbid," said I. "Why should your lot, Miss Cameron, be
separated from that of my own sisters, or the thousand other young
ladies whom every season brings out into the world? But perhaps it is
that you have a fear and distrust of mankind. Marriage brings a risk as
well as a happiness."

"The risk would be with the man who married me," she cried. And then in
an instant, as though she had said too much, she sprang to her feet and
drew her mantle round her. "The night air is chill, Mr. Upperton," said
she, and so swept swiftly away, leaving me to muse over the strange
words which had fallen from her lips.

Clearly, it was time that I should go. I set my teeth and vowed that
another day should not have passed before I should have snapped this
newly formed tie and sought the lonely retreat which awaited me upon the
moors. Breakfast was hardly over in the morning before a peasant dragged
up to the door the rude hand-cart which was to convey my few personal
belongings to my new dwelling. My fellow-lodger had kept her room; and,
steeled as my mind was against her influence, I was yet conscious of a
little throb of disappointment that she should allow me to depart
without a word of farewell. My hand-cart with its load of books had
already started, and I, having shaken hands with Mrs. Adams, was about
to follow it, when there was a quick scurry of feet on the stair, and
there she was beside me all panting with her own haste.

"Then you go--you really go?" said she.

"My studies call me."

"And to Gaster Fell?" she asked.

"Yes; to the cottage which I have built there."

"And you will live alone there?"

"With my hundred companions who lie in that cart."

"Ah, books!" she cried, with a pretty shrug of her graceful shoulders.
"But you will make me a promise?"

"What is it?" I asked, in surprise.

"It is a small thing. You will not refuse me?"

"You have but to ask it."

She bent forward her beautiful face with an expression of the most
intense earnestness. "You will bolt your door at night?" said she; and
was gone ere I could say a word in answer to her extraordinary request.

It was a strange thing for me to find myself at last duly installed in
my lonely dwelling. For me, now, the horizon was bounded by the barren
circle of wiry, unprofitable grass, patched over with furze bushes and
scarred by the profusion of Nature's gaunt and granite ribs. A duller,
wearier waste I have never seen; but its dulness was its very charm.

And yet the very first night which I spent at Gaster Fell there came a
strange incident to lead my thoughts back once more to the world which I
had left behind me.

It had been a sullen and sultry evening, with great livid cloud-banks
mustering in the west. As the night wore on, the air within my little
cabin became closer and more oppressive. A weight seemed to rest upon my
brow and my chest. From far away the low rumble of thunder came moaning
over the moor. Unable to sleep, I dressed, and standing at my cottage
door, looked on the black solitude which surrounded me.

Taking the narrow sheep path which ran by this stream, I strolled along
it for some hundred yards, and had turned to retrace my steps, when the
moon was finally buried beneath an ink-black cloud, and the darkness
deepened so suddenly that I could see neither the path at my feet, the
stream upon my right, nor the rocks upon my left. I was standing groping
about in the thick gloom, when there came a crash of thunder with a
flash of lightning which lighted up the whole vast fell, so that every
bush and rock stood out clear and hard in the vivid light. It was but
for an instant, and yet that momentary view struck a thrill of fear and
astonishment through me, for in my very path, not twenty yards before
me, there stood a woman, the livid light beating upon her face and
showing up every detail of her dress and features.

There was no mistaking those dark eyes, that tall, graceful figure. It
was she--Eva Cameron, the woman whom I thought I had for ever left. For
an instant I stood petrified, marvelling whether this could indeed be
she, or whether it was some figment conjured up by my excited brain.
Then I ran swiftly forward in the direction where I had seen her,
calling loudly upon her, but without reply. Again I called, and again no
answer came back, save the melancholy wail of the owl. A second flash
illuminated the landscape, and the moon burst out from behind its cloud.
But I could not, though I climbed upon a knoll which overlooked the
whole moor, see any sign of this strange midnight wanderer. For an hour
or more I traversed the fell, and at last found myself back at my little
cabin, still uncertain as to whether it had been a woman or a shadow
upon which I gazed.

III: OF THE GREY COTTAGE IN THE GLEN

It was either on the fourth or the fifth day after I had taken
possession of my cottage that I was astonished to hear footsteps upon
the grass outside, quickly followed by a crack, as from a stick upon the
door. The explosion of an infernal machine would hardly have surprised
or discomfited me more. I had hoped to have shaken off all intrusion for
ever, yet here was somebody beating at my door with as little ceremony
as if it had been a village ale-house. Hot with anger, I flung down my
book and withdrew the bolt just as my visitor had raised his stick to
renew his rough application for admittance. He was a tall, powerful man,
tawny-bearded and deep-chested, clad in a loose-fitting suit of tweed,
cut for comfort rather than elegance. As he stood in the shimmering
sunlight, I took in every feature of his face. The large, fleshy nose;
the steady blue eyes, with their thick thatch of overhanging brows; the
broad forehead, all knitted and lined with furrows, which were strangely
at variance with his youthful bearing. In spite of his weather-stained
felt hat, and the coloured handkerchief slung round his muscular brown
neck, I could see at a glance he was a man of breeding and education. I
had been prepared for some wandering shepherd or uncouth tramp, but this
apparition fairly disconcerted me.

"You look astonished," said he, with a smile. "Did you think, then, that
you were the only man in the world with a taste for solitude? You see
that there are other hermits in the wilderness besides yourself."

"Do you mean to say that you live here?" I asked in no conciliatory
voice.

"Up yonder," he answered, tossing his head backward. "I thought as we
were neighbours, Mr. Upperton, that I could not do less than look in and
see if I could assist you in any way."

"Thank you," I said coldly, standing with my hand upon the latch of the
door. "I am a man of simple tastes, and you can do nothing for me. You
have the advantage of me in knowing my name."

He appeared to be chilled by my ungracious manner.

"I learned it from the masons who were at work here," he said. "As for
me, I am a surgeon, the surgeon of Gaster Fell. That is the name I have
gone by in these parts, and it serves as well as another."

"Not much room for practice here?" I observed.

"Not a soul except yourself for miles on either side."

"You appear to have had need of some assistance yourself," I remarked,
glancing at a broad white splash, as from the recent action of some
powerful acid, upon his sunburnt cheek.

"That is nothing," he answered, curtly, turning his face half round to
hide the mark. "I must get back, for I have a companion who is waiting
for me. If I can ever do anything for you, pray let me know. You have
only to follow the beck upward for a mile or so to find my place. Have
you a bolt on the inside of your door?"

"Yes," I answered, rather startled at this question.

"Keep it bolted, then," he said. "The fell is a strange place. You never
know who may be about. It is as well to be on the safe side. Good-bye."
He raised his hat, turned on his heel and lounged away along the bank of
the little stream.

I was still standing with my hand upon the latch, gazing after my
unexpected visitor, when I became aware of yet another dweller in the
wilderness. Some distance along the path which the stranger was taking
there lay a great grey boulder, and leaning against this was a small,
wizened man, who stood erect as the other approached, and advanced to
meet him. The two talked for a minute or more, the taller man nodding
his head frequently in my direction, as though describing what had
passed between us. Then they walked on together, and disappeared in a
dip of the fell. Presently I saw them ascending once more some rising
ground farther on. My acquaintance had thrown his arm round his elderly
friend, either from affection or from a desire to aid him up the steep
incline. The square burly figure and its shrivelled, meagre companion
stood out against the sky-line, and turning their faces, they looked
back at me. At the sight, I slammed the door, lest they should be
encouraged to return. But when I peeped from the window some minutes
afterward, I perceived that they were gone.

All day I bent over the Egyptian papyrus upon which I was engaged; but
neither the subtle reasonings of the ancient philosopher of Memphis, nor
the mystic meaning which lay in his pages, could raise my mind from the
things of earth. Evening was drawing in before I threw my work aside in
despair. My heart was bitter against this man for his intrusion.
Standing by the beck which purled past the door of my cabin, I cooled my
heated brow, and thought the matter over. Clearly it was the small
mystery hanging over these neighbours of mine which had caused my mind
to run so persistently on them. That cleared up, they would no longer
cause an obstacle to my studies. What was to hinder me, then, from
walking in the direction of their dwelling, and observing for myself,
without permitting them to suspect my presence, what manner of men they
might be? Doubtless, their mode of life would be found to admit of some
simple and prosaic explanation. In any case, the evening was fine, and a
walk would be bracing for mind and body. Lighting my pipe, I set off
over the moors in the direction which they had taken.

About half-way down a wild glen there stood a small clump of gnarled and
stunted oak trees. From behind these, a thin dark column of smoke rose
into the still evening air. Clearly this marked the position of my
neighbour's house. Trending away to the left, I was able to gain the
shelter of a line of rocks, and so reach a spot from which I could
command a view of the building without exposing myself to any risk of
being observed. It was a small, slate-covered cottage, hardly larger
than the boulders among which it lay. Like my own cabin, it showed signs
of having been constructed for the use of some shepherd; but, unlike
mine, no pains had been taken by the tenants to improve and enlarge it.
Two little peeping windows, a cracked and weather-beaten door, and a
discoloured barrel for catching the rain water, were the only external
objects from which I might draw deductions as to the dwellers within.
Yet even in these there was food for thought, for as I drew nearer,
still concealing myself behind the ridge, I saw that thick bars of iron
covered the windows, while the old door was slashed and plated with the
same metal. These strange precautions, together with the wild
surroundings and unbroken solitude, gave an indescribably ill omen and
fearsome character to the solitary building. Thrusting my pipe into my
pocket, I crawled upon my hands and knees through the gorse and ferns
until I was within a hundred yards of my neighbour's door. There,
finding that I could not approach nearer without fear of detection, I
crouched down, and set myself to watch.

I had hardly settled into my hiding place, when the door of the cottage
swung open, and the man who had introduced himself to me as the surgeon
of Gaster Fell came out, bareheaded, with a spade in his hands. In front
of the door there was a small cultivated patch containing potatoes, peas
and other forms of green stuff, and here he proceeded to busy himself,
trimming, weeding and arranging, singing the while in a powerful though
not very musical voice. He was all engrossed in his work, with his back
to the cottage, when there emerged from the half-open door the same
attenuated creature whom I had seen in the morning. I could perceive now
that he was a man of sixty, wrinkled, bent, and feeble, with sparse,
grizzled hair, and long, colourless face. With a cringing, sidelong
gait, he shuffled toward his companion, who was unconscious of his
approach until he was close upon him. His light footfall or his
breathing may have finally given notice of his proximity, for the worker
sprang round and faced him. Each made a quick step toward the other, as
though in greeting, and then--even now I feel the horror of the
instant--the tall man rushed upon and knocked his companion to the
earth, then whipping up his body, ran with great speed over the
intervening ground and disappeared with his burden into the house.

Case hardened as I was by my varied life, the suddenness and violence of
the thing made me shudder. The man's age, his feeble frame, his humble
and deprecating manner, all cried shame against the deed. So hot was my
anger, that I was on the point of striding up to the cabin, unarmed as I
was, when the sound of voices from within showed me that the victim had
recovered. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and all was grey, save
a red feather in the cap of Pennigent. Secure in the failing light, I
approached near and strained my ears to catch what was passing. I could
hear the high, querulous voice of the elder man and the deep, rough
monotone of his assailant, mixed with a strange metallic jangling and
clanking. Presently the surgeon came out, locked the door behind him and
stamped up and down in the twilight, pulling at his hair and brandishing
his arms, like a man demented. Then he set off, walking rapidly up the
valley, and I soon lost sight of him among the rocks.

When his footsteps had died away in the distance, I drew nearer to the
cottage. The prisoner within was still pouring forth a stream of words,
and moaning from time to time like a man in pain. These words resolved
themselves, as I approached, into prayers--shrill, voluble prayers,
pattered forth with the intense earnestness of one who sees impending
and imminent danger. There was to me something inexpressibly awesome in
this gush of solemn entreaty from the lonely sufferer, meant for no
human ear, and jarring upon the silence of the night. I was still
pondering whether I should mix myself in the affair or not, when I heard
in the distance the sound of the surgeon's returning footfall. At that I
drew myself up quickly by the iron bars and glanced in through the
diamond-paned window. The interior of the cottage was lighted up by a
lurid glow, coming from what I afterward discovered to be a chemical
furnace. By its rich light I could distinguish a great litter of
retorts, test tubes and condensers, which sparkled over the table, and
threw strange, grotesque shadows on the wall. On the further side of the
room was a wooden framework resembling a hencoop, and in this, still
absorbed in prayer, knelt the man whose voice I heard. The red glow
beating upon his upturned face made it stand out from the shadow like a
painting from Rembrandt, showing up every wrinkle upon the
parchment-like skin. I had but time for a fleeting glance; then,
dropping from the window, I made off through the rocks and the heather,
nor slackened my pace until I found myself back in my cabin once more.
There I threw myself upon my couch, more disturbed and shaken than I had
ever thought to feel again.

Such doubts as I might have had as to whether I had indeed seen my
former fellow-lodger upon the night of the thunderstorm were resolved
the next morning. Strolling along down the path which led to the fell, I
saw in one spot where the ground was soft the impressions of a foot--the
small, dainty foot of a well-booted woman. That tiny heel and high
in-step could have belonged to none other than my companion of
Kirkby-Malhouse. I followed her trail for some distance, till it still
pointed, so far as I could discern it, to the lonely and ill-omened
cottage. What power could there be to draw this tender girl, through
wind and rain and darkness, across the fearsome moors to that strange
rendezvous?

I have said that a little beck flowed down the valley and past my very
door. A week or so after the doings which I have described, I was seated
by my window when I perceived something white drifting slowly down the
stream. My first thought was that it was a drowning sheep; but picking
up my stick, I strolled to the bank and hooked it ashore. On examination
it prove to be a large sheet, torn and tattered, with the initials J. C.
in the corner. What gave it its sinister significance, however, was that
from hem to hem it was all dabbled and discoloured.

Shutting the door of my cabin, I set off up the glen in the direction of
the surgeon's cabin. I had not gone far before I perceived the very man
himself. He was walking rapidly along the hillside, beating the furze
bushes with a cudgel and bellowing like a madman. Indeed, at the sight
of him, the doubts as to his sanity which had risen in my mind were
strengthened and confirmed.

As he approached I noticed that his left arm was suspended in a sling.
On perceiving me he stood irresolute, as though uncertain whether to
come over to me or not. I had no desire for an interview with him,
however, so I hurried past him, on which he continued on his way, still
shouting and striking about with his club. When he had disappeared over
the fells, I made my way down to his cottage, determined to find some
clue to what occurred. I was surprised, on reaching it, to find the
iron-plated door flung wide open. The ground immediately outside it was
marked with the signs of a struggle. The chemical apparatus within and
the furniture were all dashed about and shattered. Most suggestive of
all, the sinister wooden cage was stained with blood-marks, and its
unfortunate occupant had disappeared. My heart was heavy for the little
man, for I was assured I should never see him in this world more.

There was nothing in the cabin to throw any light upon the identity of
my neighbours. The room was stuffed with chemical instruments. In one
corner a small bookcase contained a choice selection of works of
science. In another was a pile of geological specimens collected from
the limestone.

I caught no glimpse of the surgeon upon my homeward journey; but when I
reached my cottage I was astonished and indignant to find that somebody
had entered it in my absence. Boxes had been pulled out from under the
bed, the curtains disarranged, the chairs drawn out from the wall. Even
my study had not been safe from this rough intruder, for the prints of a
heavy boot were plainly visible on the ebony-black carpet.

IV: OF THE MAN WHO CAME IN THE NIGHT

The night set in gusty and tempestuous, and the moon was all girt with
ragged clouds. The wind blew in melancholy gusts, sobbing and sighing
over the moor, and setting all the gorse bushes agroaning. From time to
time a little sputter of rain pattered up against the window-pane. I sat
until near midnight, glancing over the fragment on immortality by
Iamblichus, the Alexandrian platonist, of whom the Emperor Julian said
that he was posterior to Plato in time but not in genius. At last,
shutting up my book, I opened my door and took a last look at the dreary
fell and still more dreary sky. As I protruded my head, a swoop of wind
caught me and sent the red ashes of my pipe sparkling and dancing
through the darkness. At the same moment the moon shone brilliantly out
from between two clouds and I saw, sitting on the hillside, not two
hundred yards from my door, the man who called himself the surgeon of
Gaster Fell. He was squatted among the heather, his elbows upon his
knees, and his chin resting upon his hands, as motionless as a stone,
with his gaze fixed steadily upon the door of my dwelling.

At the sight of this ill-omened sentinel, a chill of horror and of fear
shot through me, for his gloomy and mysterious associations had cast a
glamour round the man, and the hour and place were in keeping with his
sinister presence. In a moment, however, a manly glow of resentment and
self-confidence drove this petty emotion from my mind, and I strode
fearlessly in his direction. He rose as I approached and faced me, with
the moon shining on his grave, bearded face and glittering on his
eyeballs. "What is the meaning of this?" I cried, as I came upon him.
"What right have you to play the spy on me?"

I could see the flush of anger rise on his face. "Your stay in the
country has made you forget your manners," he said. "The moor is free to
all."

"You will say next that my house is free to all," I said, hotly. "You
have had the impertinence to ransack it in my absence this afternoon."

He started, and his features showed the most intense excitement. "I
swear to you that I had no hand in it!" he cried. "I have never set foot
in your house in my life. Oh, sir, sir, if you will but believe me,
there is a danger hanging over you, and you would do well to be
careful."

"I have had enough of you," I said. "I saw that cowardly blow you struck
when you thought no human eye rested upon you. I have been to your
cottage, too, and know all that it has to tell. If there is a law in
England, you shall hang for what you have done. As to me, I am an old
soldier, sir, and I am armed. I shall not fasten my door. But if you or
any other villain attempt to cross my threshold it shall be at your own
risk." With these words, I swung round upon my heel and strode into my
cabin.

For two days the wind freshened and increased, with constant squalls of
rain until on the third night the most furious storm was raging which I
can ever recollect in England. I felt that it was positively useless to
go to bed, nor could I concentrate my mind sufficiently to read a book.
I turned my lamp half down to moderate the glare, and leaning back in my
chair, I gave myself up to reverie. I must have lost all perception of
time, for I have no recollection how long I sat there on the borderland
betwixt thought and slumber. At last, about 3 or possibly 4 o'clock, I
came to myself with a start--not only came to myself, but with every
sense and nerve upon the strain. Looking round my chamber in the dim
light, I could not see anything to justify my sudden trepidation. The
homely room, the rain-blurred window and the rude wooden door were all
as they had been. I had begun to persuade myself that some half-formed
dream had sent that vague thrill through my nerves, when in a moment I
became conscious of what it was. It was a sound--the sound of a human
step outside my solitary cottage.

Amid the thunder and the rain and the wind I could hear it--a dull,
stealthy footfall, now on the grass, now on the stones--occasionally
stopping entirely, then resumed, and ever drawing nearer. I sat
breathlessly, listening to the eerie sound. It had stopped now at my
very door, and was replaced by a panting and gasping, as of one who has
travelled fast and far.

By the flickering light of the expiring lamp I could see that the latch
of my door was twitching, as though a gentle pressure was exerted on it
from without. Slowly, slowly, it rose, until it was free of the catch,
and then there was a pause of a quarter minute or more, while I still
sat silent with dilated eyes and drawn sabre. Then, very slowly, the
door began to revolve upon its hinges, and the keen air of the night
came whistling through the slit. Very cautiously it was pushed open, so
that never a sound came from the rusty hinges. As the aperture enlarged,
I became aware of a dark, shadowy figure upon my threshold, and of a
pale face that looked in at me. The features were human, but the eyes
were not. They seemed to burn through the darkness with a greenish
brilliancy of their own; and in their baleful, shifty glare I was
conscious of the very spirit of murder. Springing from my chair, I had
raised my naked sword, when, with a wild shouting, a second figure
dashed up to my door. At its approach my shadowy visitant uttered a
shrill cry, and fled away across the fells, yelping like a beaten hound.

Tingling with my recent fear, I stood at my door, peering through the
night with the discordant cry of the fugitives still ringing in my ears.
At that moment a vivid flash of lightning illuminated the whole
landscape and made it as clear as day. By its light I saw far away upon
the hillside two dark figures pursuing each other with extreme rapidity
across the fells. Even at that distance the contrast between them forbid
all doubt as to their identity. The first was the small, elderly man,
whom I had supposed to be dead; the second was my neighbour, the
surgeon. For an instant they stood out clear and hard in the unearthly
light; in the next, the darkness had closed over them, and they were
gone. As I turned to re-enter my chamber, my foot rattled against
something on my threshold. Stooping, I found it was a straight knife,
fashioned entirely of lead, and so soft and brittle that it was a
strange choice for a weapon. To render it more harmless, the top had
been cut square off. The edge, however, had been assiduously sharpened
against a stone, as was evident from the markings upon it, so that it
was still a dangerous implement in the grasp of a determined man.

And what was the meaning of it all? you ask. Many a drama which I have
come across in my wandering life, some as strange and as striking as
this one, has lacked the ultimate explanation which you demand. Fate is
a grand weaver of tales; but she ends them, as a rule, in defiance of
all artistic laws, and with an unbecoming want of regard for literary
propriety. As it happens, however, I have a letter before me as I write
which I may add without comment, and which will clear all that may
remain dark.

"KIRKBY LUNATIC ASYLUM,

"_September 4th_, 1885.

"SIR,--I am deeply conscious that some apology and explanation
is due to you for the very startling and, in your eyes,
mysterious events which have recently occurred, and which have
so seriously interfered with the retired existence which you
desire to lead. I should have called upon you on the morning
after the recapture of my father, but my knowledge of your
dislike to visitors and also of--you will excuse my saying
it--your very violent temper, led me to think that it was
better to communicate with you by letter.

"My poor father was a hard-working general practitioner in
Birmingham, where his name is still remembered and respected.
About ten years ago he began to show signs of mental
aberration, which we were inclined to put down to overwork and
the effects of a sunstroke. Feeling my own incompetence to
pronounce upon a case of such importance, I at once sought the
highest advice in Birmingham and London. Among others we
consulted the eminent alienist, Mr. Fraser Brown, who
pronounced my father's case to be intermittent in its nature,
but dangerous during the paroxysms. 'It may take a homicidal,
or it may take a religious turn,' he said; 'or it may prove to
be a mixture of both. For months he may be as well as you or I,
and then in a moment he may break out. You will incur a great
responsibility if you leave him without supervision.'

"I need say no more, sir. You will understand the terrible task
which has fallen upon my poor sister and me in endeavoring to
save my father from the asylum which in his sane moments filled
him with horror. I can only regret that your peace has been
disturbed by our misfortunes, and I offer you in my sister's
name and my own our apologies.

"Yours truly,

"J. CAMERON."

III

BORROWED SCENES

"It cannot be done. People really would not stand it. I know
because I have tried."--_Extract from an unpublished paper upon
George Borrow and his writings._

Yes, I tried and my experience may interest other people. You must
imagine, then, that I am soaked in George Borrow, especially in his
_Lavengro_ and his _Romany Rye_, that I have modelled both my thoughts,
my speech and my style very carefully upon those of the master, and that
finally I set forth one summer day actually to lead the life of which I
had read. Behold me, then, upon the country road which leads from the
railway-station to the Sussex village of Swinehurst.

As I walked, I entertained myself by recollections of the founders of
Sussex, of Cerdic that mighty sea-rover, and of Ella his son, said by
the bard to be taller by the length of a spear-head than the tallest of
his fellows. I mentioned the matter twice to peasants whom I met upon
the road. One, a tallish man with a freckled face, sidled past me and
ran swiftly towards the station. The other, a smaller and older man,
stood entranced while I recited to him that passage of the Saxon
Chronicle which begins, "Then came Leija with longships forty-four, and
the fyrd went out against him." I was pointing out to him that the
Chronicle had been written partly by the monks of Saint Albans and
afterwards by those of Peterborough, but the fellow sprang suddenly over
a gate and disappeared.

The village of Swinehurst is a straggling line of half-timbered houses
of the early English pattern. One of these houses stood, as I observed,
somewhat taller than the rest, and seeing by its appearance and by the
sign which hung before it that it was the village inn, I approached it,
for indeed I had not broken my fast since I had left London. A stoutish
man, five foot eight perhaps in height, with black coat and trousers of
a greyish shade, stood outside, and to him I talked in the fashion of
the master.

"Why a rose and why a crown?" I asked as I pointed upwards.

He looked at me in a strange manner. The man's whole appearance was
strange. "Why not?" he answered, and shrank a little backwards.

"The sign of a king," said I.

"Surely," said he. "What else should we understand from a crown?"

"And which king?" I asked.

"You will excuse me," said he, and tried to pass.

"Which king?" I repeated.

"How should I know?" he asked.

"You should know by the rose," said I, "which is the symbol of that
Tudor-ap-Tudor, who, coming from the mountains of Wales, yet seated his
posterity upon the English throne. Tudor," I continued, getting between
the stranger and the door of the inn, through which he appeared to be
desirous of passing, "was of the same blood as Owen Glendower, the
famous chieftain, who is by no means to be confused with Owen Gwynedd,
the father of Madoc of the Sea, of whom the bard made the famous cnylyn,
which runs in the Welsh as follows:--"

I was about to repeat the famous stanza of Dafydd-ap-Gwilyn when the
man, who had looked very fixedly and strangely at me as I spoke, pushed
past me and entered the inn. "Truly," said I aloud, "it is surely
Swinehurst to which I have come, since the same means the grove of the
hogs." So saying I followed the fellow into the bar parlour, where I
perceived him seated in a corner with a large chair in front of him.
Four persons of various degrees were drinking beer at a central table,
whilst a small man of active build, in a black, shiny suit, which seemed
to have seen much service, stood before the empty fireplace. Him I took
to be the landlord, and I asked him what I should have for my dinner.

He smiled, and said that he could not tell.

"But surely, my friend," said I, "you can tell me what is ready?"

"Even that I cannot do," he answered; "but I doubt not that the landlord
can inform us." On this he rang the bell, and a fellow answered, to whom
I put the same question.

"What would you have?" he asked.

I thought of the master, and I ordered a cold leg of pork to be washed
down with tea and beer.

"Did you say tea _and_ beer?" asked the landlord.

"I did."

"For twenty-five years have I been in business," said the landlord, "and
never before have I been asked for tea and beer."

"The gentleman is joking," said the man with the shining coat.

"Or else----" said the elderly man in the corner.

"Or what, sir?" I asked.

"Nothing," said he--"nothing." There was something very strange in this
man in the corner--him to whom I had spoken of Dafydd-ap-Gwilyn.

"Then you are joking," said the landlord.

I asked him if he had read the works of my master, George Borrow. He
said that he had not. I told him that in those five volumes he would
not, from cover to cover, find one trace of any sort of a joke. He would
also find that my master drank tea and beer together. Now it happens
that about tea I have read nothing either in the sagas or in the bardic
cnylynions, but, whilst the landlord had departed to prepare my meal, I
recited to the company those Icelandic stanzas which praise the beer of
Gunnar, the long-haired son of Harold the Bear. Then, lest the language
should be unknown to some of them, I recited my own translation, ending
with the line--

"If the beer be small, then let the mug be large."

I then asked the company whether they went to church or to chapel. The
question surprised them, and especially the strange man in the corner,
upon whom I now fixed my eye. I had read his secret, and as I looked at
him he tried to shrink behind the clock-case.

"The church or the chapel?" I asked him.

"The church," he gasped.

"_Which_ church?" I asked.

He shrank farther behind the clock. "I have never been so questioned,"
he cried.

I showed him that I knew his secret. "Rome was not built in a day," said
I.

"He! He!" he cried. Then, as I turned away, he put his head from behind
the clock-case, and tapped his forehead with his fore-finger. So also
did the man with the shiny coat, who stood before the empty fireplace.

Having eaten the cold leg of pork--where is there a better dish, save
only boiled mutton with capers?--and having drunk both the tea and the
beer, I told the company that such a meal had been called "to box Harry"
by the master, who had observed it to be in great favour with commercial
gentlemen out of Liverpool. With this information and a stanza or two
from Lopez de Vega I left the Inn of the Rose and Crown behind me,
having first paid my reckoning. At the door the landlord asked me for my
name and address.

"And why?" I asked.

"Lest there should be inquiry for you," said the landlord.

"But why should they enquire for me?"

"Ah, who knows?" said the landlord, musing. And so I left him at the
door of the Inn of the Rose and Crown, whence came, I observed, a great
tumult of laughter. "Assuredly," thought I, "Rome was not built in a
day."

Having walked down the main street of Swinehurst, which, as I have
observed, consists of half-timbered buildings in the ancient style, I
came out upon the country road, and proceeded to look for those wayside
adventures, which are, according to the master, as thick as blackberries
for those who seek them upon an English highway. I had already received
some boxing lessons before leaving London, so it seemed to me that if I
should chance to meet some traveller whose size and age seemed such as
to encourage the venture, I would ask him to strip off his coat and
settle any differences which we could find in the old English fashion. I
waited, therefore, by a stile for any one who should chance to pass, and
it was while I stood there that the screaming horror came upon me, even
as it came upon the master in the dingle. I gripped the bar of the
stile, which was of good British oak. Oh, who can tell the terrors of
the screaming horror! That was what I thought as I grasped the oaken bar
of the stile. Was it the beer--or was it the tea? Or was it that the
landlord was right and that other, the man with the black, shiny coat,
he who had answered the sign of the strange man in the corner? But the
master drank tea with beer. Yes, but the master also had the screaming
horror. All this I thought as I grasped the bar of British oak, which
was the top of the stile. For half an hour the horror was upon me. Then
it passed, and I was left feeling very weak and still grasping the oaken
bar.

I had not moved from the stile, where I had been seized by the screaming
horror, when I heard the sound of steps behind me, and turning round I
perceived that a pathway led across the field upon the farther side of
the stile. A woman was coming towards me along this pathway, and it was
evident to me that she was one of those gipsy Rias, of whom the master
has said so much. Looking beyond her, I could see the smoke of a fire
from a small dingle, which showed where her tribe were camping. The
woman herself was of a moderate height, neither tall nor short, with a
face which was much sunburned and freckled. I must confess that she was
not beautiful, but I do not think that any one, save the master, has
found very beautiful women walking about upon the high-roads of England.
Such as she was I must make the best of her, and well I knew how to
address her, for many times had I admired the mixture of politeness and
audacity which should be used in such a case. Therefore, when the woman
had come to the stile, I held out my hand and helped her over.

"What says the Spanish poet Calderon?" said I. "I doubt not that you
have read the couplet which has been thus Englished:

'Oh, maiden, may I humbly pray
That I may help you on your way.'"

The woman blushed, but said nothing.

"Where," I asked, "are the Romany chals and the Romany chis?"

She turned her head away and was silent.

"Though I am a gorgio," said I, "I know something of the Romany lil,"
and to prove it I sang the stanza--

"Coliko, coliko saulo wer
Apopli to the farming ker
Will wel and mang him mullo,
Will wel and mang his truppo."

The girl laughed, but said nothing. It appeared to me from her
appearance that she might be one of those who make a living at telling
fortunes or "dukkering," as the master calls it, at racecourses and
other gatherings of the sort.

"Do you dukker?" I asked.

She slapped me on the arm. "Well, you _are_ a pot of ginger!" said she.

I was pleased at the slap, for it put me in mind of the peerless Belle.
"You can use Long Melford," said I, an expression which, with the
master, meant fighting.

"Get along with your sauce!" said she, and struck me again.

"You are a very fine young woman," said I, "and remind me of Grunelda,
the daughter of Hjalmar, who stole the golden bowl from the King of the
Islands."

She seemed annoyed at this. "You keep a civil tongue, young man," said
she.

"I meant no harm, Belle. I was but comparing you to one of whom the saga
says her eyes were like the shine of sun upon icebergs."

This seemed to please her, for she smiled. "My name ain't Belle," she
said at last.

"What is your name?"

"Henrietta."

"The name of a queen," I said aloud.

"Go on," said the girl.

"Of Charles's queen," said I, "of whom Waller the poet (for the English
also have their poets, though in this respect far inferior to the
Basques)--of whom, I say, Waller the poet said:

'That she was Queen was the Creator's act,
Belated man could but endorse the fact.'"

"I say!" cried the girl. "How you do go on!"

"So now," said I, "since I have shown you that you are a queen you will
surely give me a choomer"--this being a kiss in Romany talk.

"I'll give you one on the ear-hole," she cried.

"Then I will wrestle with you," said I. "If you should chance to put me
down, I will do penance by teaching you the Armenian alphabet--the very
word alphabet, as you will perceive, shows us that our letters came from
Greece. If, on the other hand, I should chance to put you down, you will
give me a choomer."

I had got so far, and she was climbing the stile with some pretence of
getting away from me, when there came a van along the road, belonging,
as I discovered, to a baker in Swinehurst. The horse, which was of a
brown colour, was such as is bred in the New Forest, being somewhat
under fifteen hands and of a hairy, ill-kempt variety. As I know less
than the master about horses, I will say no more of this horse, save to
repeat that its colour was brown--nor indeed had the horse nor the
horse's colour anything to do with my narrative. I might add, however,
that it could either be taken as a small horse or as a large pony, being
somewhat tall for the one, but undersized for the other. I have now said
enough about this horse, which has nothing to do with my story, and I
will turn my attention to the driver.

This was a man with a broad, florid face and brown side-whiskers. He was
of a stout build and had rounded shoulders, with a small mole of a
reddish colour over his left eyebrow. His jacket was of velveteen, and
he had large, iron-shod boots, which were perched upon the splashboard
in front of him. He pulled up the van as he came up to the stile near
which I was standing with the maiden who had come from the dingle, and
in a civil fashion he asked me if I could oblige him with a light for
his pipe. Then, as I drew a matchbox from my pocket, he threw his reins
over the splashboard, and removing his large, iron-shod boots he
descended on to the road. He was a burly man, but inclined to fat and
scant of breath. It seemed to me that it was a chance for one of those
wayside boxing adventures which were so common in the olden times. It
was my intention that I should fight the man, and that the maiden from
the dingle standing by me should tell me when to use my right or my
left, as the case might be, picking me up also in case I should be so
unfortunate as to be knocked down by the man with the iron-shod boots
and the small mole of a reddish colour over his left eyebrow.

"Do you use Long Melford?" I asked.

He looked at me in some surprise, and said that any mixture was good
enough for him.

"By Long Melford," said I, "I do not mean, as you seem to think, some
form of tobacco, but I mean that art and science of boxing which was
held in such high esteem by our ancestors, that some famous professors
of it, such as the great Gully, have been elected to the highest offices
of the State. There were men of the highest character amongst the
bruisers of England, of whom I would particularly mention Tom of
Hereford, better known as Tom Spring, though his father's name, as I
have been given to understand, was Winter. This, however, has nothing to
do with the matter in hand, which is that you must fight me."

The man with the florid face seemed very much surprised at my words, so
that I cannot think that adventures of this sort were as common as I had
been led by the master to expect.

"Fight!" said he. "What about?"

"It is a good old English custom," said I, "by which we may determine
which is the better man."

"I've nothing against you," said he.

"Nor I against you," I answered. "So that we will fight for love, which
was an expression much used in olden days. It is narrated by Harold
Sygvynson that among the Danes it was usual to do so even with
battle-axes, as is told in his second set of runes. Therefore you will
take off your coat and fight." As I spoke, I stripped off my own.

The man's face was less florid than before. "I'm not going to fight,"
said he.

"Indeed you are," I answered, "and this young woman will doubtless do
you the service to hold your coat."

"You're clean balmy," said Henrietta.

"Besides," said I, "if you will not fight me for love, perhaps you will
fight me for this," and I held out a sovereign. "Will you hold his
coat?" I said to Henrietta.

"I'll hold the thick 'un," said she.

"No, you don't," said the man, and put the sovereign into the pocket of
his trousers, which were of a corduroy material. "Now," said he, "what
am I do to earn this?"

"Fight," said I.

"How do you do it?" he asked.

"Put up your hands," I answered.

He put them up as I had said, and stood there in a sheepish manner with
no idea of anything further. It seemed to me that if I could make him
angry he would do better, so I knocked off his hat, which was black and
hard, of the kind which is called billy-cock.

"Heh, guv'nor!" he cried, "what are you up to?"

"That was to make you angry," said I.

"Well, I am angry," said he.

"Then here is your hat," said I, "and afterwards we shall fight."

I turned as I spoke to pick up his hat, which had rolled behind where I
was standing. As I stooped to reach it, I received such a blow that I
could neither rise erect nor yet sit down. This blow which I received as
I stooped for his billy-cock hat was not from his fist, but from his
iron-shod boot, the same which I had observed upon the splashboard.
Being unable either to rise erect or yet to sit down, I leaned upon the
oaken bar of the stile and groaned loudly on account of the pain of the
blow which I had received. Even the screaming horror had given me less
pain than this blow from the iron-shod boot. When at last I was able to
stand erect, I found that the florid-faced man had driven away with his
cart, which could no longer be seen. The maiden from the dingle was
standing at the other side of the stile, and a ragged man was running
across the field from the direction of the fire.

"Why did you not warn me, Henrietta?" I asked.

"I hadn't time," said she. "Why were you such a chump as to turn your
back on him like that?"

The ragged man had reached us, where I stood talking to Henrietta by the
stile. I will not try to write his conversation as he said it, because I
have observed that the master never condescends to dialect, but prefers
by a word introduced here and there to show the fashion of a man's
speech. I will only say that the man from the dingle spoke as did the
Anglo-Saxons who were wont, as is clearly shown by the venerable Bede,
to call their leaders 'Enjist and 'Orsa, two words which in their proper
meaning signify a horse and a mare.

"What did he hit you for?" asked the man from the dingle. He was
exceedingly ragged, with a powerful frame, a lean brown face, and an
oaken cudgel in his hand. His voice was very hoarse and rough, as is the
case with those who live in the open air. "The bloke hit you," said he.
"What did the bloke hit you for?"

"He asked him to," said Henrietta.

"Asked him to--asked him what?"

"Why, he asked him to hit him. Gave him a thick 'un to do it."

The ragged man seemed surprised. "See here, guv'nor," said he. "If
you're collectin', I could let you have one half-price."

"He took me unawares," said I.

"What else would the bloke do when you bashed his hat?" said the maiden
from the dingle.

By this time I was able to straighten myself up by the aid of the oaken
bar which formed the top of the stile. Having quoted a few lines of the
Chinese poet Lo-tun-an to the effect that, however hard a knock might
be, it might always conceivably be harder, I looked about for my coat,
but could by no means find it.

"Henrietta," I said, "what have you done with my coat?"

"Look here, guv'nor," said the man from the dingle, "not so much
Henrietta, if it's the same to you. This woman's my wife. Who are you to
call her Henrietta?"

I assured the man from the dingle that I had meant no disrespect to his
wife. "I had thought she was a mort," said I; "but the ria of a Romany
chal is always sacred to me."

"Clean balmy," said the woman.

"Some other day," said I, "I may visit you in your camp in the dingle
and read you the master's book about the Romanys."

"What's Romanys?" asked the man.

_Myself._ Romanys are gipsies.

_The Man._ We ain't gipsies.

_Myself._ What are you then?

_The Man._ We are hoppers.

_Myself_ (to Henrietta). Then how did you understand all I have said to
you about gipsies?

_Henrietta._ I didn't.

I again asked for my coat, but it was clear now that before offering to
fight the florid-faced man with the mole over his left eyebrow I must
have hung my coat upon the splashboard of his van. I therefore recited a
verse from Ferideddin-Atar, the Persian poet, which signifies that it is
more important to preserve your skin than your clothes, and bidding
farewell to the man from the dingle and his wife I returned into the old
English village of Swinehurst, where I was able to buy a second-hand
coat, which enabled me to make my way to the station, where I should
start for London. I could not but remark with some surprise that I was
followed to the station by many of the villagers, together with the man
with the shiny coat, and that other, the strange man, he who had slunk
behind the clock-case. From time to time I turned and approached them,
hoping to fall into conversation with them; but as I did so they would
break and hasten down the road. Only the village constable came on, and
he walked by my side and listened while I told him the history of
Hunyadi Janos and the events which occurred during the wars between that
hero, known also as Corvinus or the crow-like, and Mahommed the second,
he who captured Constantinople, better known as Byzantium, before the
Christian epoch. Together with the constable I entered the station, and
seating myself in a carriage I took paper from my pocket and I began to
write upon the paper all that had occurred to me, in order that I might
show that it was not easy in these days to follow the example of the
master. As I wrote, I heard the constable talk to the station-master, a
stout, middle-sized man with a red neck-tie, and tell him of my own
adventures in the old English village of Swinehurst.

"He is a gentleman too," said the constable, "and I doubt not that he
lives in a big house in London town."

"A very big house if every man had his rights," said the station-master,
and waving his hand he signalled that the train should proceed.

THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL

On the fourth day of March, in the year 1867, I being at that time in my
five-and-twentieth year, I wrote down the following words in my
note-book--the result of much mental perturbation and conflict:

"The solar system, amidst a countless number of other systems as large
as itself, rolls ever silently through space in the direction of the
constellation of Hercules. The great spheres of which it is composed
spin and spin through the eternal void ceaselessly and noiselessly. Of
these one of the smallest and most insignificant is that conglomeration
of solid and of liquid particles which we have named the earth. It
whirls onwards now as it has done before my birth, and will do after my
death--a revolving mystery, coming none know whence, and going none know
whither. Upon the outer crust of this moving mass crawl many mites, of
whom I, John M'Vittie, am one, helpless, impotent, being dragged
aimlessly through space. Yet such is the state of things amongst us that
the little energy and glimmering of reason which I possess is entirely
taken up with the labours which are necessary in order to procure
certain metallic discs, wherewith I may purchase the chemical elements
necessary to build up my ever-wasting tissues, and keep a roof over me
to shelter me from the inclemency of the weather. I thus have no thought
to expend upon the vital questions which surround me on every side. Yet,
miserable entity as I am, I can still at times feel some degree of
happiness, and am even--save the mark!--puffed up occasionally with a
sense of my own importance."

These words, as I have said, I wrote down in my note-book, and they
reflected accurately the thoughts which I found rooted far down in my
soul, ever present and unaffected by the passing emotions of the hour.
At last, however, came a time when my uncle, M'Vittie of Glencairn,
died--the same who was at one time chairman of committees of the House
of Commons. He divided his great wealth among his many nephews, and I
found myself with sufficient to provide amply for my wants during the
remainder of my life, and became at the same time the owner of a bleak
tract of land upon the coast of Caithness, which I think the old man
must have bestowed upon me in derision, for it was sandy and valueless,
and he had ever a grim sense of humour. Up to this time I had been an
attorney in a midland town in England. Now I saw that I could put my
thoughts into effect, and, leaving all petty and sordid aims, could
elevate my mind by the study of the secrets of nature. My departure from
my English home was somewhat accelerated by the fact that I had nearly
slain a man in a quarrel, for my temper was fiery, and I was apt to
forget my own strength when enraged. There was no legal action taken in
the matter, but the papers yelped at me, and folk looked askance when I
met them. It ended by my cursing them and their vile, smoke-polluted
town, and hurrying to my northern possession, where I might at last find
peace and an opportunity for solitary study and contemplation. I
borrowed from my capital before I went, and so was able to take with me
a choice collection of the most modern philosophical instruments and
books, together with chemicals and such other things as I might need in
my retirement.

The land which I had inherited was a narrow strip, consisting mostly of
sand, and extending for rather over two miles round the coast of Mansie
Bay, in Caithness. Upon this strip there had been a rambling, grey-stone
building--when erected or wherefore none could tell me--and this I had
repaired, so that it made a dwelling quite good enough for one of my
simple tastes. One room was my laboratory, another my sitting-room, and
in a third, just under the sloping roof, I slung the hammock in which I
always slept. There were three other rooms, but I left them vacant,
except one which was given over to the old crone who kept house for me.
Save the Youngs and the M'Leods, who were fisher-folk living round at
the other side of Fergus Ness, there were no other people for many miles
in each direction. In front of the house was the great bay, behind it
were two long barren hills, capped by other loftier ones beyond. There
was a glen between the hills, and when the wind was from the land it
used to sweep down this with a melancholy sough and whisper among the
branches of the fir-trees beneath my attic window.

I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear
for the most part to dislike me. I hate their little crawling ways,
their conventionalities, their deceits, their narrow rights and wrongs.
They take offence at my brusque outspokenness, my disregard for their
social laws, my impatience of all constraint. Among my books and my
drugs in my lonely den at Mansie I could let the great drove of the
human race pass onwards with their politics and inventions and
tittle-tattle, and I remained behind stagnant and happy. Not stagnant
either, for I was working in my own little groove, and making progress.
I have reason to believe that Dalton's atomic theory is founded upon
error, and I know that mercury is not an element.

During the day I was busy with my distillations and analyses. Often I
forgot my meals, and when old Madge summoned me to my tea I found my
dinner lying untouched upon the table. At night I read Bacon, Descartes,
Spinoza, Kant--all those who have pried into what is unknowable. They
are all fruitless and empty, barren of result, but prodigal of
polysyllables, reminding me of men who, while digging for gold, have
turned up many worms, and then exhibit then exultantly as being what
they sought. At times a restless spirit would come upon me, and I would
walk thirty and forty miles without rest or breaking fast. On these
occasions, when I used to stalk through the country villages, gaunt,
unshaven, and dishevelled, the mothers would rush into the road and drag
their children indoors, and the rustics would swarm out of their
pot-houses to gaze at me. I believe that I was known far and wide as the
"mad laird o' Mansie." It was rarely, however, that I made these raids
into the country, for I usually took my exercise upon my own beach,
where I soothed my spirit with strong black tobacco, and made the ocean
my friend and my confidant.

What companion is there like the great restless, throbbing sea? What
human mood is there which it does not match and sympathise with? There
are none so gay but that they may feel gayer when they listen to its
merry turmoil, and see the long green surges racing in, with the glint
of the sunbeams in their sparkling crests. But when the grey waves toss
their heads in anger, and the wind screams above them, goading them on
to madder and more tumultuous efforts, then the darkest-minded of men
feels that there is a melancholy principle in Nature which is as gloomy
as his own thoughts. When it was calm in the Bay of Mansie the surface
would be as clear and bright as a sheet of silver, broken only at one
spot some little way from the shore, where a long black line projected
out of the water looking like the jagged back of some sleeping monster.
This was the top of the dangerous ridge of rocks known to the fishermen
as the "ragged reef o' Mansie." When the wind blew from the east the
waves would break upon it like thunder, and the spray would be tossed
far over my house and up to the hills behind. The bay itself was a bold
and noble one, but too much exposed to the northern and eastern gales,
and too much dreaded for its reef, to be much used by mariners. There
was something of romance about this lonely spot. I have lain in my boat
upon a calm day, and peering over the edge I have seen far down the
flickering, ghostly forms of great fish--fish, as it seemed to me, such
as naturalist never knew, and which my imagination transformed into the
genii of that desolate bay. Once, as I stood by the brink of the waters
upon a quiet night, a great cry, as of a woman in hopeless grief, rose
from the bosom of the deep, and swelled out upon the still air, now
sinking and now rising, for a space of thirty seconds. This I heard with
my own ears.

In this strange spot, with the eternal hills behind me and the eternal
sea in front, I worked and brooded for more than two years unpestered by
my fellow men. By degrees I had trained my old servant into habits of
silence, so that she now rarely opened her lips, though I doubt not that
when twice a year she visited her relations in Wick, her tongue during
those few days made up for its enforced rest. I had come almost to
forget that I was a member of the human family, and to live entirely
with the dead whose books I pored over, when a sudden incident occurred
which threw all my thoughts into a new channel.

Three rough days in June had been succeeded by one calm and peaceful
one. There was not a breath of air that evening. The sun sank down in
the west behind a line of purple clouds, and the smooth surface of the
bay was gashed with scarlet streaks. Along the beach the pools left by
the tide showed up like gouts of blood against the yellow sand, as if
some wounded giant had toilfully passed that way, and had left these red
traces of his grievous hurt behind him. As the darkness closed in,
certain ragged clouds which had lain low on the eastern horizon
coalesced and formed a great irregular cumulus. The glass was still low,
and I knew that there was mischief brewing. About nine o'clock a dull
moaning sound came up from the sea, as from a creature, who, much
harassed, learns that the hour of suffering has come round again. At ten
a sharp breeze sprang up from the eastward. At eleven it had increased
to a gale, and by midnight the most furious storm was raging which I
ever remember upon that weather-beaten coast.

As I went to bed the shingle and seaweed were pattering up against my
attic window, and the wind was screaming as though every gust were a
lost soul. By that time the sounds of the tempest had become a lullaby
to me. I knew that the grey walls of the old house would buffet it out,
and for what occurred in the world outside I had small concern. Old
Madge was usually as callous to such things as I was myself. It was a
surprise to me when, about three in the morning, I was awoke by the
sound of a great knocking at my door and excited cries in the wheezy
voice of my housekeeper. I sprang out of my hammock, and roughly
demanded of her what was the matter.

"Eh, maister, maister!" she screamed in her hateful dialect. "Come doun,
mun; come doun! There's a muckle ship gaun ashore on the reef, and the
puir folks are a' yammerin' and ca'in' for help--and I doobt they'll a'
be drooned. Oh, Maister M'Vittie, come doun!"

"Hold your tongue, you hag!" I shouted back in a passion. "What is it to
you whether they are drowned or not? Get back to your bed and leave me
alone." I turned in again and drew the blankets over me. "Those men out
there," I said to myself, "have already gone through half the horrors of
death. If they be saved they will but have to go through the same once
more in the space of a few brief years. It is best therefore that they
should pass away now, since they have suffered that anticipation which
is more than the pain of dissolution." With this thought in my mind I
endeavoured to compose myself to sleep once more, for that philosophy
which had taught me to consider death as a small and trivial incident in
man's eternal and ever-changing career, had also broken me of much
curiosity concerning worldly matters. On this occasion I found, however,
that the old leaven still fermented strongly in my soul. I tossed from
side to side for some minutes endeavouring to beat down the impulses of
the moment by the rules of conduct which I had framed during months of
thought. Then I heard a dull roar amid the wild shriek of the gale, and
I knew that it was the sound of a signal-gun. Driven by an
uncontrollable impulse, I rose, dressed, and having lit my pipe, walked
out on to the beach.

It was pitch dark when I came outside, and the wind blew with such
violence that I had to put my shoulder against it and push my way along
the shingle. My face pringled and smarted with the sting of the gravel
which was blown against it, and the red ashes of my pipe streamed away
behind me, dancing fantastically through the darkness. I went down to
where the great waves were thundering in, and shading my eyes with my
hands to keep off the salt spray, I peered out to sea. I could
distinguish nothing, and yet it seemed to me that shouts and great
inarticulate cries were borne to me by the blasts. Suddenly as I gazed I
made out the glint of a light, and then the whole bay and the beach were
lit up in a moment by a vivid blue glare. They were burning a coloured
signal-light on board of the vessel. There she lay on her beam ends
right in the centre of the jagged reef, hurled over to such an angle
that I could see all the planking of her deck. She was a large
two-masted schooner, of foreign rig, and lay perhaps a hundred and
eighty or two hundred yards from the shore. Every spar and rope and
writhing piece of cordage showed up hard and clear under the livid light
which sputtered and flickered from the highest portion of the
forecastle. Beyond the doomed ship out of the great darkness came the
long rolling lines of black waves, never ending, never tiring, with a
petulant tuft of foam here and there upon their crests. Each as it
reached the broad circle of unnatural light appeared to gather strength
and volume, and to hurry on more impetuously until, with a roar and a
jarring crash, it sprang upon its victim. Clinging to the weather
shrouds I could distinctly see some ten or twelve frightened seamen,
who, when their light revealed my presence, turned their white faces
towards me and waved their hands imploringly. I felt my gorge rise
against these poor cowering worms. Why should they presume to shirk the
narrow pathway along which all that is great and noble among mankind has
travelled? There was one there who interested me more than they. He was
a tall man, who stood apart from the others, balancing himself upon the
swaying wreck as though he disdained to cling to rope or bulwark. His
hands were clasped behind his back and his head was sunk upon his
breast, but even in that despondent attitude there was a litheness and
decision in his pose and in every motion which marked him as a man
little likely to yield to despair. Indeed, I could see by his occasional
rapid glances up and down and all around him that he was weighing every
chance of safety, but though he often gazed across the raging surf to
where he could see my dark figure upon the beach, his self-respect or
some other reason forbade him from imploring my help in any way. He
stood, dark, silent, and inscrutable, looking down on the black sea, and
waiting for whatever fortune Fate might send him.

It seemed to me that that problem would very soon be settled. As I
looked, an enormous billow, topping all the others, and coming after
them, like a driver following a flock, swept over the vessel. Her
foremast snapped short off, and the men who clung to the shrouds were
brushed away like a swarm of flies. With a rending, riving sound the
ship began to split in two, where the sharp back of the Mansie reef was
sawing into her keel. The solitary man upon the forecastle ran rapidly
across the deck and seized hold of a white bundle which I had already
observed but failed to make out. As he lifted it up the light fell upon
it, and I saw that the object was a woman, with a spar lashed across her
body and under her arms in such a way that her head should always rise
above water. He bore her tenderly to the side and seemed to speak for a
minute or so to her, as though explaining the impossibility of remaining
upon the ship. Her answer was a singular one. I saw her deliberately
raise her hand and strike him across the face with it. He appeared to be
silenced for a moment or so by this, but he addressed her again,
directing her, as far as I could gather from his motions, how she should
behave when in the water. She shrank away from him, but he caught her in
his arms. He stooped over her for a moment and seemed to press his lips
against her forehead. Then a great wave came welling up against the side
of the breaking vessel, and leaning over he placed her upon the summit
of it as gently as a child might be committed to its cradle. I saw her
white dress flickering among the foam on the crest of the dark billow,
and then the light sank gradually lower, and the riven ship and its
lonely occupant were hidden from my eyes.

As I watched those things my manhood overcame my philosophy, and I felt
a frantic impulse to be up and doing. I threw my cynicism to one side as
a garment which I might don again at leisure, and I rushed wildly to my
boat and my sculls. She was a leaky tub, but what then? Was I, who had
cast many a wistful, doubtful glance at my opium bottle, to begin now to
weigh chances and to cavil at danger? I dragged her down to the sea with
the strength of a maniac and sprang in. For a moment or two it was a
question whether she could live among the boiling surge, but a dozen
frantic strokes took me through it, half full of water but still afloat.
I was out on the unbroken waves now, at one time climbing, climbing up
the broad black breast of one, then sinking down, down on the other
side, until looking up I could see the gleam of the foam all around me
against the dark heavens. Far behind me I could hear the wild wailings
of old Madge, who, seeing me start, thought no doubt that my madness had
come to a climax. As I rowed I peered over my shoulder, until at last on
the belly of a great wave which was sweeping towards me I distinguished
the vague white outline of the woman. Stooping over, I seized her as she
swept by me, and with an effort lifted her, all sodden with water, into
the boat. There was no need to row back, for the next billow carried us
in and threw us upon the beach. I dragged the boat out of danger, and
then lifting up the woman I carried her to the house, followed by my
housekeeper, loud with congratulation and praise.

Now that I had done this thing a reaction set in upon me. I felt that my
burden lived, for I heard the faint beat of her heart as I pressed my
ear against her side in carrying her. Knowing this, I threw her down
beside the fire which Madge had lit, with as little sympathy as though
she had been a bundle of fagots. I never glanced at her to see if she
were fair or no. For many years I had cared little for the face of a
woman. As I lay in my hammock upstairs, however, I heard the old woman
as she chafed the warmth back into her, crooning a chorus of, "Eh, the
puir lassie! Eh, the bonnie lassie!" from which I gathered that this
piece of jetsam was both young and comely.

* * * * *

The morning after the gale was peaceful and sunny. As I walked along the
long sweep of sand I could hear the panting of the sea. It was heaving
and swirling about the reef, but along the shore it rippled in gently
enough. There was no sign of the schooner, nor was there any wreckage
upon the beach, which did not surprise me, as I knew there was a great
undertow in those waters. A couple of broad-winged gulls were hovering
and skimming over the scene of the shipwreck, as though many strange
things were visible to them beneath the waves. At times I could hear
their raucous voices as they spoke to one another of what they saw.

When I came back from my walk the woman was waiting at the door for me.
I began to wish when I saw her that I had never saved her, for here was
an end of my privacy. She was very young--at the most nineteen, with a
pale somewhat refined face, yellow hair, merry blue eyes, and shining
teeth. Her beauty was of an ethereal type. She looked so white and light
and fragile that she might have been the spirit of that storm-foam from
out of which I plucked her. She had wreathed some of Madge's garments
round her in a way which was quaint and not unbecoming. As I strode
heavily up the pathway, she put out her hands with a pretty, child-like
gesture, and ran down towards me, meaning, as I surmise, to thank me for
having saved her, but I put her aside with a wave of my hand and passed
her. At this she seemed somewhat hurt, and the tears sprang into her
eyes, but she followed me into the sitting-room and watched me
wistfully. "What country do you come from?" I asked her suddenly.

She smiled when I spoke, but shook her head.

"Francais?" I asked. "Deutsch?" "Espagnol?"--each time she shook her
head, and then she rippled off into a long statement in some tongue of
which I could not understand one word.

After breakfast was over, however, I got a clue to her nationality.
Passing along the beach once more, I saw that in a cleft of the ridge a
piece of wood had been jammed. I rowed out to it in my boat, and brought
it ashore. It was part of the sternpost of a boat, and on it, or rather
on the piece of wood attached to it, was the word "Archangel," painted
in strange, quaint lettering. "So," I thought, as I paddled slowly back,
"this pale damsel is a Russian. A fit subject for the White Czar and a
proper dweller on the shores of the White Sea!" It seemed to me strange
that one of her apparent refinement should perform so long a journey in
so frail a craft. When I came back into the house, I pronounced the word
"Archangel" several times in different intonations, but she did not
appear to recognise it.

I shut myself up in the laboratory all the morning, continuing a
research which I was making upon the nature of the allotropic forms of
carbon and of sulphur. When I came out at mid-day for some food she was
sitting, by the table with a needle and thread, mending some rents in
her clothes, which were now dry. I resented her continued presence, but
I could not turn her out on the beach to shift for herself. Presently
she presented a new phase of her character. Pointing to herself and then
to the scene of the shipwreck, she held up one finger, by which I
understood her to be asking whether she was the only one saved. I nodded
my head to indicate that she was. On this she sprang out of her chair
with a cry of great joy, and holding the garment which she was mending
over her head, and swaying it from side to side with the motion of her
body, she danced as lightly as a feather all round the room, and then
out through the open door into the sunshine. As she whirled round she
sang in a plaintive shrill voice some uncouth barbarous chant,
expressive of exultation. I called out to her, "Come in, you young
fiend, come in and be silent!" but she went on with her dance. Then she
suddenly ran towards me, and catching my hand before I could pluck it
away, she kissed it. While we were at dinner she spied one of my
pencils, and taking it up she wrote the two words "Sophie Ramusine" upon
a piece of paper, and then pointed to herself as a sign that that was
her name. She handed the pencil to me, evidently expecting that I would
be equally communicative, but I put it in my pocket as a sign that I
wished to hold no intercourse with her.

Every moment of my life now I regretted the unguarded precipitancy with
which I had saved this woman. What was it to me whether she had lived or
died? I was no young, hot-headed youth to do such things. It was bad
enough to be compelled to have Madge in the house, but she was old and
ugly, and could be ignored. This one was young and lively, and so
fashioned as to divert attention from graver things. Where could I send
her, and what could I do with her? If I sent information to Wick it
would mean that officials and others would come to me and pry, and peep,
and chatter--a hateful thought. It was better to endure her presence
than that.

I soon found that there were fresh troubles in store for me. There is no
place safe from the swarming, restless race of which I am a member. In
the evening, when the sun was dipping down behind the hills, casting
them into dark shadow, but gilding the sands and casting a great glory
over the sea, I went, as is my custom, for a stroll along the beach.
Sometimes on these occasions I took my book with me. I did so on this
night, and stretching myself upon a sand-dune I composed myself to read.
As I lay there I suddenly became aware of a shadow which interposed
itself between the sun and myself. Looking round, I saw to my great
surprise a very tall, powerful man, who was standing a few yards off,
and who, instead of looking at me, was ignoring my existence completely,
and was gazing over my head with a stern set face at the bay and the
black line of the Mansie reef. His complexion was dark, with black hair,
and short, curling beard, a hawk-like nose, and golden earrings in his
ears--the general effect being wild and somewhat noble. He wore a faded
velveteen jacket, a red-flannel shirt, and high sea boots, coming
half-way up his thighs. I recognised him at a glance as being the same
man who had been left on the wreck the night before.

"Hullo!" I said, in an aggrieved voice. "You got ashore all right,
then?"

"Yes," he answered, in good English. "It was no doing of mine. The waves
threw me up. I wish to God I had been allowed to drown!" There was a
slight foreign lisp in his accent which was rather pleasing. "Two good
fishermen, who live round yonder point, pulled me out and cared for me;
yet I could not honestly thank them for it."

"Ho! ho!" thought I, "here is a man of my own kidney."

"Why do you wish to be drowned?" I asked.

"Because," he cried, throwing out his long arms with a passionate,
despairing gesture, "there--there in that blue smiling bay, lies my
soul, my treasure--everything that I loved and lived for."

"Well, well," I said. "People are ruined every day, but there's no use
making a fuss about it. Let me inform you that this ground on which you
walk is my ground, and that the sooner you take yourself off it the
better pleased I shall be. One of you is quite trouble enough."

"One of us?" he gasped.

"Yes--if you could take her off with you I should be still more
grateful."

He gazed at me for a moment as if hardly able to realise what I said,
and then with a wild cry he ran away from me with prodigious speed and
raced along the sands towards my house. Never before or since have I
seen a human being run so fast. I followed as rapidly as I could,
furious at this threatened invasion, but long before I reached the house
he had disappeared through the open door. I heard a great scream from
the inside, and as I came nearer the sound of a man's bass voice
speaking rapidly and loudly. When I looked in, the girl, Sophie
Ramusine, was crouching in a corner, cowering away, with fear and
loathing expressed on her averted face and in every line of her
shrinking form. The other, with his dark eyes flashing, and his
outstretched hands quivering with emotion, was pouring forth a torrent
of passionate pleading words. He made a step forward to her as I
entered, but she writhed still further away, and uttered a sharp cry
like that of a rabbit when the weasel has him by the throat.

"Here!" I said, pulling him back from her. "This is a pretty to-do! What
do you mean? Do you think this is a wayside inn or place of public
accommodation?"

"Oh, sir," he said, "excuse me. This woman is my wife, and I feared that
she was drowned. You have brought me back to life."

"Who are you?" I asked roughly.

"I am a man from Archangel," he said simply; "a Russian man."

"What is your name?"

"Ourganeff."

"Ourganeff!--and hers is Sophie Ramusine. She is no wife of yours. She
has no ring."

"We are man and wife in the sight of Heaven," he said solemnly, looking
upwards. "We are bound by higher laws than those of earth." As he spoke
the girl slipped behind me and caught me by the other hand, pressing it
as though beseeching my protection. "Give me up my wife, sir," he went
on. "Let me take her away from here."

"Look here, you--whatever your name is," I said sternly; "I don't want
this wench here. I wish I had never seen her. If she died it would be no
grief to me. But as to handing her over to you, when it is clear she
fears and hates you, I won't do it. So now just clear your great body
out of this, and leave me to my books. I hope I may never look upon your
face again."

"You won't give her up to me?" he said hoarsely.

"I'll see you damned first!" I answered.

"Suppose I take her," he cried, his dark face growing darker.

All my tigerish blood flashed up in a moment. I picked up a billet of
wood from beside the fireplace. "Go," I said, in a low voice, "go quick,
or I may do you an injury." He looked at me irresolutely for a moment,
and then he left the house. He came back again in a moment, however, and
stood in the doorway looking in at us.

"Have a heed what you do," he said. "The woman is mine, and I shall have
her. When it comes to blows, a Russian is as good a man as a Scotchman."

"We shall see that," I cried, springing forward, but he was already
gone, and I could see his tall form moving away through the gathering
darkness.

For a month or more after this things went smoothly with us. I never
spoke to the Russian girl, nor did she ever address me. Sometimes when I
was at work in my laboratory she would slip inside the door and sit
silently there watching me with her great eyes. At first this intrusion
annoyed me, but by degrees, finding that she made no attempt to distract
my attention, I suffered her to remain. Encouraged by this concession,
she gradually came to move the stool on which she sat nearer and nearer
to my table, until after gaining a little every day during some weeks,
she at last worked her way right up to me, and used to perch herself
beside me whenever I worked. In this position she used, still without
ever obtruding her presence in any way, to make herself very useful by
holding my pens, test-tubes, or bottles and handing me whatever I
wanted, with never-failing sagacity. By ignoring the fact of her being a
human being, and looking upon her as a useful automatic machine, I
accustomed myself to her presence so far as to miss her on the few
occasions when she was not at her post. I have a habit of talking aloud
to myself at times when I work, so as to fix my results better in my
mind. The girl must have had a surprising memory for sounds, for she
could always repeat the words which I let fall in this way, without, of
course, understanding in the least what they meant. I have often been
amused at hearing her discharge a volley of chemical equations and
algebraic symbols at old Madge, and then burst into a ringing laugh when
the crone would shake her head, under the impression, no doubt, that she
was being addressed in Russian.

She never went more than a few yards from the house, and indeed never
put her foot over the threshold without looking carefully out of each
window in order to be sure that there was nobody about. By this I knew
that she suspected that her fellow-countryman was still in the
neighbourhood, and feared that he might attempt to carry her off. She
did something else which was significant. I had an old revolver with
some cartridges, which had been thrown away among the rubbish. She found
this one day, and at once proceeded to clean it and oil it. She hung it
up near the door, with the cartridges in a little bag beside it, and
whenever I went for a walk, she would take it down and insist upon my
carrying it with me. In my absence she would always bolt the door. Apart
from her apprehensions she seemed fairly happy, busying herself in
helping Madge when she was not attending upon me. She was wonderfully
nimble-fingered and natty in all domestic duties.

It was not long before I discovered that her suspicions were well
founded, and that this man from Archangel was still lurking in the
vicinity. Being restless one night I rose and peered out of the window.
The weather was somewhat cloudy, and I could barely make out the line of
the sea, and the loom of my boat upon the beach. As I gazed, however,
and my eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, I became aware that
there was some other dark blur upon the sands, and that in front of my
very door, where certainly there had been nothing of the sort the
preceding night. As I stood at my diamond-paned lattice, still peering
and peeping to make out what this might be, a great bank of clouds
rolled slowly away from the face of the moon, and a flood of cold, clear
light was poured down upon the silent bay and the long sweep of its
desolate shores. Then I saw what this was which haunted my doorstep. It
was he, the Russian. He squatted there like a gigantic toad, with his
legs doubled under him in strange Mongolian fashion, and his eyes fixed
apparently upon the window of the room in which the young girl and the
housekeeper slept. The light fell upon his upturned face, and I saw once
more the hawk-like grace of his countenance, with the single
deeply-indented line of care upon his brow, and the protruding beard
which marks the passionate nature. My first impulse was to shoot him as
a trespasser, but, as I gazed, my resentment changed into pity and
contempt "Poor fool," I said to myself, "is it then possible that you,
whom I have seen looking open-eyed at present death, should have your
whole thoughts and ambitions centred upon this wretched slip of a
girl--a girl, too, who flies from you and hates you? Most women would
love you--were it but for that dark face and great handsome body of
yours--and yet you must needs hanker after the one in a thousand who
will have no traffic with you." As I returned to my bed I chuckled much
to myself over this thought. I knew that my bars were strong and my
bolts thick. It mattered little to me whether this strange man spent his
night at my door or a hundred leagues off, so long as he was gone by the
morning. As I expected, when I rose and went out, there was no sign of
him, nor had he left any trace of his midnight vigil.

It was not long, however, before I saw him again. I had been out for a
row one morning, for my head was aching, partly from prolonged stooping,
and partly from the effects of a noxious drug which I had inhaled the
night before. I pulled along the coast some miles, and then, feeling
thirsty, I landed at a place where I knew that a fresh water stream
trickled down into the sea. This rivulet passed through my land, but the
mouth of it, where I found myself that day, was beyond my boundary line.
I felt somewhat taken aback when rising from the stream at which I had
slaked my thirst I found myself face to face with the Russian. I was as
much a trespasser now as he was, and I could see at a glance that he
knew it.

"I wish to speak a few words to you," he said gravely.

"Hurry up, then!" I answered, glancing at my watch. "I have no time to
listen to chatter."

"Chatter!" he repeated angrily. "Ah, but there. You Scotch people are
strange men. Your face is hard and your words rough, but so are those of
the good fishermen with whom I stay, yet I find that beneath it all
there lie kind honest natures. No doubt you are kind and good, too, in
spite of your roughness."

"In the name of the devil," I said, "say your say, and go your way. I am
weary of the sight of you."

"Can I not soften you in any way?" he cried. "Ah, see--see here"--he
produced a small Grecian cross from inside his velvet jacket. "Look at
this. Our religions may differ in form, but at least we have some common
thoughts and feelings when we see this emblem."

"I am not so sure of that," I answered.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

"You are a very strange man," he said at last. "I cannot understand you.
You still stand between me and Sophie. It is a dangerous position to
take, sir. Oh, believe me, before it is too late. If you did but know
what I have done to gain that woman--how I have risked my body, how I
have lost my soul! You are a small obstacle to some which I have
surmounted--you, whom a rip with a knife, or a blow from a stone, would
put out of my way for ever. But God preserve me from that," he cried
wildly. "I am deep--too deep--already. Anything rather than that."

"You would do better to go back to your country," I said, "than to skulk
about these sand-hills and disturb my leisure. When I have proof that
you have gone away I shall hand this woman over to the protection of the
Russian Consul at Edinburgh. Until then, I shall guard her myself, and
not you, nor any Muscovite that ever breathed, shall take her from me."

"And what is your object in keeping me from Sophie?" he asked. "Do you
imagine that I would injure her? Why man, I would give my life freely to
save her from the slightest harm. Why do you do this thing?"

"I do it because it is my good pleasure to act so," I answered. "I give
no man reasons for my conduct."

"Look here!" he cried, suddenly blazing into fury, and advancing towards
me with his shaggy mane bristling and his brown hands clenched. "If I
thought you had one dishonest thought towards this girl--if for a moment
I had reason to believe that you had any base motive for detaining
her--as sure as there is a God in Heaven I should drag the heart out of
your bosom with my hands." The very idea seemed to have put the man in a
frenzy, for his face was all distorted and his hands opened and shut
convulsively. I thought that he was about to spring at my throat.

"Stand off," I said, putting my hand on my pistol. "If you lay a finger
on me I shall kill you."

He put his hand into his pocket, and for a moment I thought he was about
to produce a weapon too, but instead of that he whipped out a cigarette
and lit it, breathing the smoke rapidly into his lungs. No doubt he had
found by experience that this was the most effectual way of curbing his
passions.

"I told you," he said in a quieter voice, "that my name is
Ourganeff--Alexis Ourganeff. I am a Finn by birth, but I have spent my
life in every part of the world. I was one who could never be still, nor
settle down to a quiet existence. After I came to own my own ship there
is hardly a port from Archangel to Australia which I have not entered. I
was rough and wild and free, but there was one at home, sir, who was
prim and white-handed and soft-tongued, skilful in little fancies and
conceits which women love. This youth by his wiles and tricks stole from
me the love of the girl whom I had ever marked as my own, and who up to
that time had seemed in some sort inclined to return my passion. I had
been on a voyage to Hammerfest for ivory, and coming back unexpectedly I
learned that my pride and treasure was to be married to this
soft-skinned boy, and that the party had actually gone to the church. In
such moments, sir, something gives way in my head, and I hardly know
what I do. I landed with a boat's crew--all men who had sailed with me
for years, and who were as true as steel. We went up to the church. They
were standing, she and he, before the priest, but the thing had not been
done. I dashed between them and caught her round the waist. My men beat
back the frightened bridegroom and the lookers on. We bore her down to
the boat and aboard our vessel, and then getting up anchor we sailed
away across the White Sea until the spires of Archangel sank down behind
the horizon. She had my cabin, my room, every comfort. I slept among the
men in the forecastle. I hoped that in time her aversion to me would
wear away, and that she would consent to marry me in England or in
France. For days and days we sailed. We saw the North Cape die away
behind us, and we skirted the grey Norwegian coast, but still, in spite
of every attention, she would not forgive me for tearing her from that
pale-faced lover of hers. Then came this cursed storm which shattered
both my ship and my hopes, and has deprived me even of the sight of the
woman for whom I have risked so much. Perhaps she may learn to love me
yet. You, sir," he said wistfully, "look like one who has seen much of
the world. Do you not think that she may come to forget this man and to
love me?"

"I am tired of your story," I said, turning away. "For my part, I think
you are a great fool. If you imagine that this love of yours will pass
away you had best amuse yourself as best you can until it does. If, on
the other hand, it is a fixed thing, you cannot do better than cut your
throat, for that is the shortest way out of it. I have no more time to
waste on the matter." With this I hurried away and walked down to the
boat. I never looked round, but I heard the dull sound of his feet upon
the sands as he followed me.

"I have told you the beginning of my story," he said, "and you shall
know the end some day. You would do well to let the girl go."

I never answered him, but pushed the boat off. When I had rowed some
distance out I looked back and saw his tall figure upon the yellow sand
as he stood gazing thoughtfully after me. When I looked again some
minutes later he had disappeared.

For a long time after this my life was as regular and as monotonous as
it had been before the shipwreck. At times I hoped that the man from
Archangel had gone away altogether, but certain footsteps which I saw
upon the sand, and more particularly a little pile of cigarette ash
which I found one day behind a hillock from which a view of the house
might be obtained, warned me that, though invisible, he was still in the
vicinity. My relations with the Russian girl remained the same as
before. Old Madge had been somewhat jealous of her presence at first,
and seemed to fear that what little authority she had would be taken
away from her. By degrees, however, as she came to realise my utter
indifference, she became reconciled to the situation, and, as I have
said before, profited by it, as our visitor performed much of the
domestic work.

And now I am coming near the end of this narrative of mine, which I have
written a great deal more for my own amusement than for that of any one
else. The termination of the strange episode in which these two Russians
had played a part was as wild and as sudden as the commencement. The
events of one single night freed me from all my troubles, and left me
once more alone with my books and my studies, as I had been before their
intrusion. Let me endeavour to describe how this came about.

I had had a long day of heavy and wearying work, so that in the evening
I determined upon taking a long walk. When I emerged from the house my
attention was attracted by the appearance of the sea. It lay like a
sheet of glass, so that never a ripple disturbed its surface. Yet the
air was filled with that indescribable moaning sound which I have
alluded to before--a sound as though the spirits of all those who lay
beneath those treacherous waters were sending a sad warning of coming
troubles to their brethren in the flesh. The fishermen's wives along
that coast know the eerie sound, and look anxiously across the waters
for the brown sails making for the land. When I heard it I stepped back
into the house and looked at the glass. It was down below 29 deg.. Then I
knew that a wild night was coming upon us.

Underneath the hills where I walked that evening it was dull and chill,
but their summits were rosy-red, and the sea was brightened by the
sinking sun. There were no clouds of importance in the sky, yet the dull
groaning of the sea grew louder and stronger. I saw, far to the
eastward, a brig beating up for Wick, with a reef in her topsails. It
was evident that her captain had read the signs of nature as I had done.
Behind her a long, lurid haze lay low upon the water, concealing the
horizon. "I had better push on," I thought to myself, "or the wind may
rise before I can get back."

I suppose I must have been at least half a mile from the house when I
suddenly stopped and listened breathlessly. My ears were so accustomed
to the noises of nature, the sighing of the breeze and the sob of the
waves, that any other sound made itself heard at a great distance. I
waited, listening with all my ears. Yes, there it was again--a
long-drawn, shrill cry of despair, ringing over the sands and echoed
back from the hills behind me--a piteous appeal for aid. It came from
the direction of my house. I turned and ran back homewards at the top of
my speed, ploughing through the sand, racing over the shingle. In my
mind there was a great dim perception of what had occurred.

About a quarter of a mile from the house there is a high sand-hill, from
which the whole country round is visible. When I reached the top of this
I paused for a moment. There was the old grey building--there the boat.
Everything seemed to be as I had left it. Even as I gazed, however, the
shrill scream was repeated, louder than before, and the next moment a
tall figure emerged from my door, the figure of the Russian sailor. Over
his shoulder was the white form of the young girl, and even in his haste
he seemed to bear her tenderly and with gentle reverence. I could hear
her wild cries and see her desperate struggles to break away from him.
Behind the couple came my old housekeeper, staunch and true, as the aged
dog, who can no longer bite, still snarls with toothless gums at the
intruder. She staggered feebly along at the heels of the ravisher,
waving her long, thin arms, and hurling, no doubt, volleys of Scotch
curses and imprecations at his head. I saw at a glance that he was
making for the boat. A sudden hope sprang up in my soul that I might be
in time to intercept him. I ran for the beach at the top of my speed. As
I ran I slipped a cartridge into my revolver. This I determined should
be the last of these invasions.

I was too late. By the time I reached the water's edge he was a hundred
yards away, making the boat spring with every stroke of his powerful
arms. I uttered a wild cry of impotent anger, and stamped up and down
the sands like a maniac. He turned and saw me. Rising from his seat he
made me a graceful bow, and waved his hand to me. It was not a
triumphant or a derisive gesture. Even my furious and distempered mind
recognised it as being a solemn and courteous leave-taking. Then he
settled down to his oars once more, and the little skiff shot away out
over the bay. The sun had gone down now, leaving a single dull, red
streak upon the water, which stretched away until it blended with the
purple haze on the horizon. Gradually the skiff grew smaller and smaller
as it sped across this lurid band, until the shades of night gathered
round it and it became a mere blur upon the lonely sea. Then this vague
loom died away also and darkness settled over it--a darkness which
should never be raised.

And why did I pace the solitary shore, hot and wrathful as a wolf whose
whelp has been torn from it? Was it that I loved this Muscovite girl?
No--a thousand times no. I am not one who, for the sake of a white skin
or a blue eye, would belie my own life, and change the whole tenor of my
thoughts and existence. My heart was untouched. But my pride--ah, there
I had been cruelly wounded. To think that I had been unable to afford
protection to the helpless one who craved it of me, and who relied on
me! It was that which made my heart sick and sent the blood buzzing
through my ears.

That night a great wind rose up from the sea, and the wild waves
shrieked upon the shore as though they would tear it back with them into
the ocean. The turmoil and the uproar were congenial to my vexed spirit.
All night I wandered up and down, wet with spray and rain, watching the
gleam of the white breakers and listening to the outcry of the storm. My
heart was bitter against the Russian. I joined my feeble pipe to the
screaming of the gale. "If he would but come back again!" I cried, with
clenched hands; "if he would but come back!"

He came back. When the grey light of morning spread over the eastern
sky, and lit up the great waste of yellow, tossing waters, with the
brown clouds drifting swiftly over them, then I saw him once again. A
few hundred yards off along the sand there lay a long dark object, cast
up by the fury of the waves. It was my boat, much shattered and
splintered. A little farther on, a vague, shapeless something was
washing to and fro in the shallow water, all mixed with shingle and with
seaweed. I saw at a glance that it was the Russian, face downwards and
dead. I rushed into the water and dragged him up on to the beach. It was
only when I turned him over that I discovered that she was beneath him,
his dead arms encircling her, his mangled body still intervening between
her and the fury of the storm. It seemed that the fierce German Sea
might beat the life from him, but with all its strength it was unable to
tear this one-idea'd man from the woman whom he loved. There were signs
which led me to believe that during that awful night the woman's fickle
mind had come at last to learn the worth of the true heart and strong
arm which struggled for her and guarded her so tenderly. Why else should
her little head be nestling so lovingly on his broad breast, while her
yellow hair entwined itself with his flowing beard? Why too should there
be that bright smile of ineffable happiness and triumph, which death
itself had not had power to banish from his dusky face? I fancy that
death had been brighter to him than life had ever been.

Madge and I buried them there on the shores of the desolate northern
sea. They lie in one grave deep down beneath the yellow sand. Strange
things may happen in the world around them. Empires may rise and may
fall, dynasties may perish, great wars may come and go, but, heedless of
it all, those two shall embrace each other for ever and aye, in their
lonely shrine by the side of the sounding ocean. I sometimes have
thought that their spirits flit like shadowy sea-mews over the wild
waters of the bay. No cross or symbol marks their resting-place, but old
Madge puts wild flowers upon it at times, and when I pass on my daily
walk and see the fresh blossoms scattered over the sand, I think of the
strange couple who came from afar, and broke for a little space the dull
tenor of my sombre life.

THE GREAT BROWN-PERICORD MOTOR

It was a cold, foggy, dreary evening in May. Along the Strand blurred
patches of light marked the position of the lamps. The flaring shop
windows flickered vaguely with steamy brightness through the thick and
heavy atmosphere.

The high lines of houses which led down to the Embankment were all dark
and deserted, or illuminated only by the glimmering lamp of the
caretaker. At one point, however, there shone out from three windows
upon the second floor a rich flood of light, which broke the sombre
monotony of the terrace. Passers-by glanced up curiously, and drew each
others' attention to the ruddy glare, for it marked the chambers of
Francis Pericord, the inventor and electrical engineer. Long into the
watches of the night the gleam of his lamps bore witness to the untiring
energy and restless industry which was rapidly carrying him to the first
rank in his profession.

Within the chamber sat two men. The one was Pericord himself--hawk-faced
and angular, with the black hair and brisk bearing which spoke of his
Celtic origin. The other--thick, sturdy, and blue-eyed, was Jeremy
Brown, the well-known mechanician. They had been partners in many an
invention, in which the creative genius of the one had been aided by the
practical abilities of the other. It was a question among their friends
as to which was the better man.

It was no chance visit which had brought Brown into Pericord's workshop
at so late an hour. Business was to be done--business which was to
decide the failure or success of months of work, and which might affect
their whole careers. Between them lay a long brown table, stained and
corroded by strong acids, and littered with giant carboys, Faure's
accumulators, voltaic piles, coils of wire, and great blocks of
nonconducting porcelain. In the midst of all this lumber there stood a
singular whizzing, whirring machine, upon which the eyes of both
partners were riveted.

A small square metal receptacle was connected by numerous wires to a
broad steel girdle, furnished on either side with two powerful
projecting joints. The girdle was motionless, but the joints with the
short arms attached to them flashed round every few seconds, with a
pause between each rhythmic turn. The power which moved them came
evidently from the metal box. A subtle odour of ozone was in the air.

"How about the flanges, Brown?" asked the inventor.

"They were too large to bring. They are seven foot by three. There is
power enough there to work them however. I will answer for that."

"Aluminium with an alloy of copper?"

"Yes."

"See how beautifully it works." Pericord stretched out a thin, nervous
hand, and pressed a button upon the machine. The joints revolved more
slowly, and came presently to a dead stop. Again he touched a spring and
the arms shivered and woke up again into their crisp metallic life. "The
experimenter need not exert his muscular powers," he remarked. "He has
only to be passive, and use his intelligence."

"Thanks to my motor," said Brown.

"_Our_ motor," the other broke in sharply.

"Oh, of course," said his colleague impatiently. "The motor which you
thought of, and which I reduced to practice--call it what you like."

"I call it the Brown-Pericord Motor," cried the inventor, with an angry
flash of his dark eyes. "You worked out the details, but the abstract
thought is mine, and mine alone."

"An abstract thought won't turn an engine," said Brown doggedly.

"That was why I took you into partnership," the other retorted, drumming
nervously with his fingers upon the table. "I invent, you build. It is a
fair division of labour."

Brown pursed up his lips, as though by no means satisfied upon the
point. Seeing, however, that further argument was useless, he turned his
attention to the machine, which was shivering and rocking with each
swing of its arms, as though a very little more would send it skimming
from the table.

"Is it not splendid?" cried Pericord.

"It is satisfactory," said the more phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon.

"There's immortality in it!"

"There's money in it!"

"Our names will go down with Montgolfier's."

"With Rothschild's, I hope."

"No, no, Brown; you take too material a view," cried the inventor,
raising his gleaming eyes from the machine to his companion. "Our
fortunes are a mere detail. Money is a thing which every heavy-witted
plutocrat in the country shares with us. My hopes rise to something
higher than that. Our true reward will come in the gratitude and
goodwill of the human race."

Brown shrugged his shoulders. "You may have my share of that," he said.
"I am a practical man. We must test our invention."

"Where can we do it?"

"That is what I wanted to speak about. It must be absolutely secret. If
we had private grounds of our own it would be an easy matter, but there
is no privacy in London."

"We must take it into the country."

"I have a suggestion to offer," said Brown. "My brother has a place in
Sussex on the high land near Beachy Head. There is, I remember, a large
and lofty barn near the house. Will is in Scotland, but the key is
always at my disposal. Why not take the machine down to-morrow and test
it in the barn?"

"Nothing could be better."

"There is a train to Eastbourne at one."

"I shall be at the station."

"Bring the gear with you, and I will bring the flanges," said the
mechanician, rising. "To-morrow will prove whether we have been
following a shadow, or whether fortune is at our feet. One o'clock at
Victoria." He walked swiftly down the stair and was quickly reabsorbed
into the flood of comfortless clammy humanity which ebbed and flowed
along the Strand.

* * * * *

The morning was bright and spring-like. A pale blue sky arched over
London, with a few gauzy white clouds drifting lazily across it. At
eleven o'clock Brown might have been seen entering the Patent Office
with a great roll of parchment, diagrams, and plans under his arm. At
twelve he emerged again smiling, and, opening his pocket-book, he packed
away very carefully a small slip of official blue paper. At five minutes
to one his cab rolled into Victoria Station. Two giant canvas-covered
parcels, like enormous kites, were handed down by the cabman from the
top, and consigned to the care of a guard. On the platform Pericord was
pacing up and down, with long, eager step and swinging arms, a tinge of
pink upon his sunken and sallow cheeks.

"All right?" he asked.

Brown pointed in answer to his baggage.

"I have the motor and the girdle already packed away in the guard's van.
Be careful, guard, for it is delicate machinery of great value. So! Now
we can start with an easy conscience."

At Eastbourne the precious motor was carried to a four-wheeler, and the
great flanges hoisted on the top. A long drive took them to the house
where the keys were kept, whence they set off across the barren Downs.
The building which was their destination was a commonplace whitewashed
structure, with straggling stables and out-houses, standing in a grassy
hollow which sloped down from the edge of the chalk cliffs. It was a
cheerless house even when in use, but now with its smokeless chimneys
and shuttered windows it looked doubly dreary. The owner had planted a
grove of young larches and firs around it, but the sweeping spray had
blighted them, and they hung their withered heads in melancholy groups.
It was a gloomy and forbidding spot.

But the inventors were in no mood to be moved by such trifles. The
lonelier the place, the more fitted for their purpose. With the help of
the cabman they carried their packages down the footpath, and laid them
in the darkened dining-room. The sun was setting as the distant murmur
of wheels told them that they were finally alone.

Pericord had thrown open the shutters and the mellow evening light
streamed in through the discoloured windows. Brown drew a knife from his
pocket and cut the pack-thread with which the canvas was secured. As the
brown covering fell away it disclosed two great yellow metal fans. These
he leaned carefully against the wall. The girdle, the connecting-bands,
and the motor were then in turn unpacked. It was dark before all was set
out in order. A lamp was lit, and by its light the two men continued to
tighten screws, clinch rivets, and make the last preparations for their
experiment.

"That finishes it," said Brown at last, stepping back and surveying the
machine.

Pericord said nothing, but his face glowed with pride and expectation.

"We must have something to eat," Brown remarked, laying out some
provisions which he had brought with him.

"Afterwards."

"No, now," said the stolid mechanician. "I am half starved." He pulled
up to the table and made a hearty meal, while his Celtic companion
strode impatiently up and down, with twitching fingers and restless
eyes.

"Now then," said Brown, facing round, and brushing the crumbs from his
lap, "who is to put it on?"

"I shall," cried his companion eagerly. "What we do to-night is likely
to be historic."

"But there is some danger," suggested Brown. "We cannot quite tell how
it may act."

"That is nothing," said Pericord, with a wave of his hand.

"But there is no use our going out of our way to incur danger."

"What then? One of us must do it."

"Not at all. The motor would act equally well if attached to any
inanimate object."

"That is true," said Pericord thoughtfully.

"There are bricks by the barn. I have a sack here. Why should not a
bagful of them take our place?"

"It is a good idea. I see no objection."

"Come on then," and the two sallied out, bearing with them the various
sections of their machine. The moon was shining cold and clear though an
occasional ragged cloud drifted across her face. All was still and
silent upon the Downs. They stood and listened before they entered the
barn, but not a sound came to their ears, save the dull murmur of the
sea and the distant barking of a dog. Pericord journeyed backwards and
forwards with all that they might need, while Brown filled a long narrow
sack with bricks.

When all was ready, the door of the barn was closed, and the lamp
balanced upon an empty packing-case. The bag of bricks was laid upon two
trestles, and the broad steel girdle was buckled round it. Then the
great flanges, the wires, and the metal box containing the motor were in
turn attached to the girdle. Last of all a flat steel rudder, shaped
like a fish's tail, was secured to the bottom of the sack.

"We must make it travel in a small circle," said Pericord, glancing
round at the bare high walls.

"Tie the rudder down at one side," suggested Brown. "Now it is ready.
Press the connection and off she goes!"

Pericord leaned forward, his long sallow face quivering with excitement.
His white nervous hands darted here and there among the wires. Brown
stood impassive with critical eyes. There was a sharp burr from the
machine. The huge yellow wings gave a convulsive flap. Then another.
Then a third, slower and stronger, with a fuller sweep. Then a fourth
which filled the barn with a blast of driven air. At the fifth the bag
of bricks began to dance upon the trestles. At the sixth it sprang into
the air, and would have fallen to the ground, but the seventh came to
save it, and fluttered it forward through the air. Slowly rising, it
flapped heavily round in a circle, like some great clumsy bird, filling
the barn with its buzzing and whirring. In the uncertain yellow light of
the single lamp it was strange to see the loom of the ungainly thing,
flapping off into the shadows, and then circling back into the narrow
zone of light.

The two men stood for a while in silence. Then Pericord threw his long
arms up into the air.

"It acts!" he cried. "The Brown-Pericord Motor acts!" He danced about
like a madman in his delight. Brown's eyes twinkled, and he began to
whistle.

"See how smoothly it goes, Brown!" cried the inventor. "And the
rudder--how well it acts! We must register it to-morrow."

His comrade's face darkened and set. "It _is_ registered," he said, with
a forced laugh.

"Registered?" said Pericord. "Registered?" He repeated the word first in
a whisper, and then in a kind of scream. "Who has dared to register my
invention?"

"I did it this morning. There is nothing to be excited about. It is all
right."

"You registered the motor! Under whose name?"

"Under my own," said Brown sullenly. "I consider that I have the best
right to it."

"And my name does not appear?"

"No, but----"

"You villain!" screamed Pericord. "You thief and villain! You would
steal my work! You would filch my credit! I will have that patent back
if I have to tear your throat out!" A sombre fire burned in his black
eyes, and his hands writhed themselves together with passion. Brown was
no coward, but he shrank back as the other advanced upon him.

"Keep your hands off!" he said, drawing a knife from his pocket. "I will
defend myself if you attack me.

"You threaten me?" cried Pericord, whose face was livid with anger. "You
are a bully as well as a cheat. Will you give up the patent?"

"No, I will not."

"Brown, I say, give it up!"

"I will not. I did the work."

Pericord sprang madly forward with blazing eyes and clutching fingers.
His companion writhed out of his grasp, but was dashed against the
packing-case, over which he fell. The lamp was extinguished, and the
whole barn plunged into darkness. A single ray of moonlight shining
through a narrow chink flickered over the great waving fans as they came
and went.

"Will you give up the patent, Brown?"

There was no answer.

"Will you give it up?"

Again no answer. Not a sound save the humming and creaking overhead. A
cold pang of fear and doubt struck through Pericord's heart. He felt
aimlessly about in the dark and his fingers closed upon a hand. It was
cold and unresponsive. With all his anger turned to icy horror he struck
a match, set the lamp up, and lit it.

Brown lay huddled up on the other side of the packing-case. Pericord
seized him in his arms, and with convulsive strength lifted him across.
Then the mystery of his silence was explained. He had fallen with his
right arm doubled up under him, and his own weight had driven the knife
deeply into his body. He had died without a groan. The tragedy had been
sudden, horrible, and complete.

Pericord sat silently on the edge of the case, staring blankly down, and
shivering like one with the ague, while the great Brown-Pericord Motor
boomed and hurtled above him. How long he sat there can never be known.
It might have been minutes or it might have been hours. A thousand mad
schemes flashed through his dazed brain. It was true that he had been
only the indirect cause. But who would believe that? He glanced down at
his blood-spattered clothing. Everything was against him. It would be
better to fly than to give himself up, relying upon his innocence. No
one in London knew where they were. If he could dispose of the body he
might have a few days clear before any suspicion would be aroused.

Suddenly a loud crash recalled him to himself. The flying sack had
gradually risen with each successive circle until it had struck against
the rafters. The blow displaced the connecting-gear, and the machine
fell heavily to the ground. Pericord undid the girdle. The motor was
uninjured. A sudden, strange thought flashed upon him as he looked at
it. The machine had become hateful to him. He might dispose both of it
and the body in a way that would baffle all human search.

He threw open the barn door, and carried his companion out into the
moonlight. There was a hillock outside, and on the summit of this he
laid him reverently down. Then he brought from the barn the motor, the
girdle and the flanges. With trembling fingers he fastened the broad
steel belt round the dead man's waist. Then he screwed the wings into
the sockets. Beneath he slung the motor-box, fastened the wires, and
switched on the connection. For a minute or two the huge yellow fans
flapped and flickered. Then the body began to move in little jumps down
the side of the hillock, gathering a gradual momentum, until at last it
heaved up into the air and soared heavily off in the moonlight. He had
not used the rudder, but had turned the head for the south. Gradually
the weird thing rose higher, and sped faster, until it had passed over
the line of cliff, and was sweeping over the silent sea. Pericord
watched it with a white drawn face, until it looked like a black bird
with golden wings half shrouded in the mist which lay over the waters.

* * * * *

In the New York State Lunatic Asylum there is a wild-eyed man whose name
and birth-place are alike unknown. His reason has been unseated by some
sudden shock, the doctors say, though of what nature they are unable to
determine. "It is the most delicate machine which is most readily put
out of gear," they remark, and point, in proof of their axiom, to the
complicated electric engines, and remarkable aeronautic machines which
the patient is fond of devising in his more lucid moments.

THE SEALED ROOM

A solicitor of an active habit and athletic tastes who is compelled by
his hopes of business to remain within the four walls of his office from
ten till five must take what exercise he can in the evenings. Hence it
was that I was in the habit of indulging in very long nocturnal
excursions, in which I sought the heights of Hampstead and Highgate in
order to cleanse my system from the impure air of Abchurch Lane. It was
in the course of one of these aimless rambles that I first met Felix
Stanniford, and so led up to what has been the most extraordinary
adventure of my lifetime.

One evening--it was in April or early May of the year 1894--I made my
way to the extreme northern fringe of London, and was walking down one
of those fine avenues of high brick villas which the huge city is for
ever pushing farther and farther out into the country. It was a fine,
clear spring night, the moon was shining out of an unclouded sky, and I,
having already left many miles behind me, was inclined to walk slowly
and look about me. In this contemplative mood, my attention was arrested
by one of the houses which I was passing.

It was a very large building, standing in its own grounds, a little back
from the road. It was modern in appearance, and yet it was far less so
than its neighbours, all of which were crudely and painfully new. Their
symmetrical line was broken by the gap caused by the laurel-studded
lawn, with the great, dark, gloomy house looming at the back of it.
Evidently it had been the country retreat of some wealthy merchant,
built perhaps when the nearest street was a mile off, and now gradually
overtaken and surrounded by the red brick tentacles of the London
octopus. The next stage, I reflected, would be its digestion and
absorption, so that the cheap builder might rear a dozen
eighty-pound-a-year villas upon the garden frontage. And then, as all
this passed vaguely through my mind, an incident occurred which brought
my thoughts into quite another channel.

A four-wheeled cab, that opprobium of London, was coming jolting and
creaking in one direction, while in the other there was a yellow glare
from the lamp of a cyclist. They were the only moving objects in the
whole long, moonlit road, and yet they crashed into each other with that
malignant accuracy which brings two ocean liners together in the broad
waste of the Atlantic. It was the cyclist's fault. He tried to cross in
front of the cab, miscalculated his distance, and was knocked sprawling
by the horse's shoulder. He rose, snarling; the cabman swore back at
him, and then, realising that his number had not yet been taken, lashed
his horse and lumbered off. The cyclist caught at the handles of his
prostrate machine, and then suddenly sat down with a groan. "Oh, Lord!"
he said.

I ran across the road to his side. "Any harm done?" I asked.

"It's my ankle," said he. "Only a twist, I think; but it's pretty
painful. Just give me your hand, will you?"

He lay in the yellow circle of the cycle lamp, and I noted as I helped
him to his feet that he was a gentlemanly young fellow, with a slight
dark moustache and large, brown eyes, sensitive and nervous in
appearance, with indications of weak health upon his sunken cheeks. Work
or worry had left its traces upon his thin, yellow face. He stood up
when I pulled his hand, but he held one foot in the air, and he groaned
as he moved it.

"I can't put it to the ground," said he.

"Where do you live?"

"Here!" he nodded his head towards the big, dark house in the garden. "I
was cutting across to the gate when that confounded cab ran into me.
Could you help me so far?"

It was easily done. I put his cycle inside the gate, and then I
supported him down the drive, and up the steps to the hall door. There
was not a light anywhere, and the place was as black and silent as if no
one had ever lived in it.

"That will do. Thank you very much," said he, fumbling with his key in
the lock.

"No, you must allow me to see you safe."

He made some feeble, petulant protest, and then realised that he could
really do nothing without me. The door had opened into a pitch-dark
hall. He lurched forward, with my hand still on his arm.

"This door to the right," said he, feeling about in the darkness.

I opened the door, and at the same moment he managed to strike a light.
There was a lamp upon the table, and we lit it between us. "Now, I'm all
right. You can leave me now! Good-bye!" said he, and with the words he
sat down in the arm-chair and fainted dead away.

It was a queer position for me. The fellow looked so ghastly, that
really I was not sure that he was not dead. Presently his lips quivered
and his breast heaved, but his eyes were two white slits and his colour
was horrible. The responsibility was more than I could stand. I pulled
at the bell-rope, and heard the bell ringing furiously far away. But no
one came in response. The bell tinkled away into silence, which no
murmur or movement came to break. I waited, and rang again, with the
same result. There must be some one about. This young gentleman could
not live all alone in that huge house. His people ought to know of his
condition. If they would not answer the bell, I must hunt them out
myself. I seized the lamp and rushed from the room.

What I saw outside amazed me. The hall was empty. The stairs were bare,
and yellow with dust. There were three doors opening into spacious
rooms, and each was uncarpeted and undraped, save for the grey webs
which drooped from the cornice, and rosettes of lichen which had formed
upon the walls. My feet reverberated in those empty and silent chambers.
Then I wandered on down the passage, with the idea that the kitchens, at
least, might be tenanted. Some caretaker might lurk in some secluded
room. No, they were all equally desolate. Despairing of finding any
help, I ran down another corridor, and came on something which surprised
me more than ever.

The passage ended in a large, brown door, and the door had a seal of red
wax the size of a five-shilling piece over the key-hole. This seal gave
me the impression of having been there for a long time, for it was dusty
and discoloured. I was still staring at it, and wondering what that door
might conceal, when I heard a voice calling behind me, and, running
back, found my young man sitting up in his chair and very much
astonished at finding himself in darkness.

"Why on earth did you take the lamp away?" he asked.

"I was looking for assistance."

"You might look for some time," said he. "I am alone in the house."

"Awkward if you get an illness."

"It was foolish of me to faint. I inherit a weak heart from my mother,
and pain or emotion has that effect upon me. It will carry me off some
day, as it did her. You're not a doctor, are you?"

"No, a lawyer. Frank Alder is my name."

"Mine is Felix Stanniford. Funny that I should meet a lawyer, for my
friend, Mr. Perceval, was saying that we should need one soon."

"Very happy, I am sure."

"Well, that will depend upon him, you know. Did you say that you had run
with that lamp all over the ground floor?"

"Yes."

"_All_ over it?" he asked, with emphasis, and he looked at me very hard.

"I think so. I kept on hoping that I should find some one."

"Did you enter _all_ the rooms?" he asked, with the same intent gaze.

"Well, all that I could enter."

"Oh, then you _did_ notice it!" said he, and he shrugged his shoulders
with the air of a man who makes the best of a bad job.

"Notice, what?"

"Why, the door with the seal on it."

"Yes, I did."

"Weren't you curious to know what was in it?"

"Well, it did strike me as unusual."

"Do you think you could go on living alone in this house, year after
year, just longing all the time to know what is at the other side of
that door, and yet not looking?"

"Do you mean to say," I cried, "that you don't know yourself?"

"No more than you do."

"Then why don't you look?"

"I mustn't," said he.

He spoke in a constrained way, and I saw that I had blundered on to some
delicate ground. I don't know that I am more inquisitive than my
neighbours, but there certainly was something in the situation which
appealed very strongly to my curiosity. However, my last excuse for
remaining in the house was gone now that my companion had recovered his
senses. I rose to go.

"Are you in a hurry?" he asked.

"No; I have nothing to do."

"Well, I should be very glad if you would stay with me a little. The
fact is that I live a very retired and secluded life here. I don't
suppose there is a man in London who leads such a life as I do. It is
quite unusual for me to have any one to talk with."

I looked round at the little room, scantily furnished, with a sofa-bed
at one side. Then I thought of the great, bare house, and the sinister
door with the discoloured red seal upon it. There was something queer
and grotesque in the situation, which made me long to know a little
more. Perhaps I should, if I waited. I told him that I should be very
happy.

"You will find the spirits and a siphon upon the side table. You must
forgive me if I cannot act as host, but I can't get across the room.
Those are cigars in the tray there. I'll take one myself, I think. And
so you are a solicitor, Mr. Alder?"

"Yes."

"And I am nothing. I am that most helpless of living creatures, the son
of a millionaire. I was brought up with the expectation of great wealth;
and here I am, a poor man, without any profession at all. And then, on
the top of it all, I am left with this great mansion on my hands, which
I cannot possibly keep up. Isn't it an absurd situation? For me to use
this as my dwelling is like a coster drawing his barrow with a
thoroughbred. A donkey would be more useful to him, and a cottage to
me."

"But why not sell the house?" I asked.

"I mustn't."

"Let it, then?"

"No, I mustn't do that either."

I looked puzzled, and my companion smiled.

"I'll tell you how it is, if it won't bore you," said he.

"On the contrary, I should be exceedingly interested."

"I think, after your kind attention to me, I cannot do less than relieve
any curiosity that you may feel. You must know that my father was
Stanislaus Stanniford, the banker."

Stanniford, the banker! I remembered the name at once. His flight from
the country some seven years before had been one of the scandals and
sensations of the time.

"I see that you remember," said my companion. "My poor father left the
country to avoid numerous friends, whose savings he had invested in an
unsuccessful speculation. He was a nervous, sensitive man, and the
responsibility quite upset his reason. He had committed no legal
offence. It was purely a matter of sentiment. He would not even face his
own family, and he died among strangers without ever letting us know
where he was."

"He died!" said I.

"We could not prove his death, but we know that it must be so, because
the speculations came right again, and so there was no reason why he
should not look any man in the face. He would have returned if he were
alive. But he must have died in the last two years."

"Why in the last two years?"

"Because we heard from him two years ago."

"Did he not tell you then where he was living?"

"The letter came from Paris, but no address was given. It was when my
poor mother died. He wrote to me then, with some instructions and some
advice, and I have never heard from him since."

"Had you heard before?"

"Oh, yes, we had heard before, and that's where our mystery of the
sealed door, upon which you stumbled to-night, has its origin. Pass me
that desk, if you please. Here I have my father's letters, and you are
the first man except Mr. Perceval who has seen them."

"Who is Mr. Perceval, may I ask?"

"He was my father's confidential clerk, and he has continued to be the
friend and adviser of my mother and then of myself. I don't know what we
should have done without Perceval. He saw the letters, but no one else.
This is the first one, which came on the very day when my father fled,
seven years ago. Read it to yourself."

This is the letter which I read:

"MY EVER DEAREST WIFE,--

"Since Sir William told me how weak your heart is, and how
harmful any shock might be, I have never talked about my
business affairs to you. The time has come when at all risks I
can no longer refrain from telling you that things have been
going badly with me. This will cause me to leave you for a
little time, but it is with the absolute assurance that we
shall see each other very soon. On this you can thoroughly
rely. Our parting is only for a very short time, my own
darling, so don't let it fret you, and above all don't let it
impair your health, for that is what I want above all things to
avoid.

"Now, I have a request to make, and I implore you by all that
binds us together to fulfil it exactly as I tell you. There are
some things which I do not wish to be seen by any one in my
dark room--the room which I use for photographic purposes at
the end of the garden passage. To prevent any painful thoughts,
I may assure you once for all, dear, that it is nothing of
which I need be ashamed. But still I do not wish you or Felix
to enter that room. It is locked, and I implore you when you
receive this to at once place a seal over the lock, and leave
it so. Do not sell or let the house, for in either case my
secret will be discovered. As long as you or Felix are in the
house, I know that you will comply with my wishes. When Felix
is twenty-one he may enter the room--not before.

"And now, good-bye, my own best of wives. During our short
separation you can consult Mr. Perceval on any matters which
may arise. He has my complete confidence. I hate to leave Felix
and you--even for a time--but there is really no choice.

"Ever and always your loving husband,

"STANISLAUS STANNIFORD.

"_June 4th, 1887._"

* * * * *

"These are very private family matters for me to inflict upon you," said
my companion apologetically. "You must look upon it as done in your
professional capacity. I have wanted to speak about it for years."

"I am honoured by your confidence," I answered, "and exceedingly
interested by the facts."

"My father was a man who was noted for his almost morbid love of truth.
He was always pedantically accurate. When he said, therefore, that he
hoped to see my mother very soon, and when he said that he had nothing
to be ashamed of in that dark room, you may rely upon it that he meant
it."

"Then what can it be?" I ejaculated.

"Neither my mother nor I could imagine. We carried out his wishes to the
letter, and placed the seal upon the door; there it has been ever since.
My mother lived for five years after my father's disappearance, although
at the time all the doctors said that she could not survive long. Her
heart was terribly diseased. During the first few months she had two
letters from my father. Both had the Paris postmark, but no address.
They were short and to the same effect: that they would soon be
re-united, and that she should not fret. Then there was a silence, which
lasted until her death; and then came a letter to me of so private a
nature that I cannot show it to you, begging me never to think evil of
him, giving me much good advice, and saying that the sealing of the room
was of less importance now than during the lifetime of my mother, but
that the opening might still cause pain to others, and that, therefore,
he thought it best that it should be postponed until my twenty-first
year, for the lapse of time would make things easier. In the meantime,
he committed the care of the room to me; so now you can understand how
it is that, although I am a very poor man, I can neither let nor sell
this great house."

"You could mortgage it."

"My father had already done so."

"It is a most singular state of affairs."

"My mother and I were gradually compelled to sell the furniture and to
dismiss the servants, until now, as you see, I am living unattended in a
single room. But I have only two more months."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, that in two months I come of age. The first thing that I do will
be to open that door; the second, to get rid of the house."

"Why should your father have continued to stay away when these
investments had recovered themselves?"

"He must be dead."

"You say that he had not committed any legal offence when he fled the
country?"

"None."

"Why should he not take your mother with him?"

"I do not know."

"Why should he conceal his address?"

"I do not know."

"Why should he allow your mother to die and be buried without coming
back?"

"I do not know."

"My dear sir," said I, "if I may speak with the frankness of a
professional adviser, I should say that it is very clear that your
father had the strongest reasons for keeping out of the country, and
that, if nothing has been proved against him, he at least thought that
something might be, and refused to put himself within the power of the
law. Surely that must be obvious, for in what other possible way can the
facts be explained?"

My companion did not take my suggestion in good part.

"You had not the advantage of knowing my father, Mr. Alder," he said
coldly. "I was only a boy when he left us, but I shall always look upon
him as my ideal man. His only fault was that he was too sensitive and
too unselfish. That any one should lose money through him would cut him
to the heart. His sense of honour was most acute, any theory of his
disappearance which conflicts with that is a mistaken one."

It pleased me to hear the lad speak out so roundly, and yet I knew that
the facts were against him, and that he was incapable of taking an
unprejudiced view of the situation.

"I only speak as an outsider," said I. "And now I must leave you, for I
have a long walk before me. Your story has interested me so much that I
should be glad if you could let me know the sequel."

"Leave me your card," said he; and so, having bade him "good-night," I
left him.

I heard nothing more of the matter for some time, and had almost feared
that it would prove to be one of those fleeting experiences which drift
away from our direct observation and end only in a hope or a suspicion.
One afternoon, however, a card bearing the name of Mr. J. H. Perceval
was brought up to my office in Abchurch Lane, and its bearer, a small,
dry, bright-eyed fellow of fifty, was ushered in by the clerk.

"I believe, sir," said he, "that my name has been mentioned to you by my
young friend, Mr. Felix Stanniford?"

"Of course," I answered, "I remember."

"He spoke to you, I understand, about the circumstances in connection
with the disappearance of my former employer, Mr. Stanislaus Stanniford,
and the existence of a sealed room in his former residence."

"He did."

"And you expressed an interest in the matter."

"It interested me extremely."

"You are aware that we hold Mr. Stanniford's permission to open the door
on the twenty-first birthday of his son?"

"I remember."

"The twenty-first birthday is to-day."

"Have you opened it?" I asked eagerly.

"Not yet, sir," said he gravely. "I have reason to believe that it would
be well to have witnesses present when that door is opened. You are a
lawyer, and you are acquainted with the facts. Will you be present on
the occasion?"

"Most certainly."

"You are employed during the day, and so am I. Shall we meet at nine
o'clock at the house?"

"I will come with pleasure."

"Then you will find us waiting for you. Good-bye, for the present." He
bowed solemnly, and took his leave.

I kept my appointment that evening, with a brain which was weary with
fruitless attempts to think out some plausible explanation of the
mystery which we were about to solve. Mr. Perceval and my young
acquaintance were waiting for me in the little room. I was not surprised
to see the young man looking pale and nervous, but I was rather
astonished to find the dry little City man in a state of intense, though
partially suppressed, excitement. His cheeks were flushed, his hands
twitching, and he could not stand still for an instant.

Stanniford greeted me warmly, and thanked me many times for having come.
"And now, Perceval," said he to his companion, "I suppose there is no
obstacle to our putting the thing through without delay? I shall be glad
to get it over."

The banker's clerk took up the lamp and led the way. But he paused in
the passage outside the door, and his hand was shaking, so that the
light flickered up and down the high, bare walls.

"Mr. Stanniford," said he, in a cracking voice, "I hope you will prepare
yourself in case any shock should be awaiting you when that seal is
removed and the door is opened."

"What could there be, Perceval? You are trying to frighten me."

"No, Mr. Stanniford; but I should wish you to be ready ... to be braced
up ... not to allow yourself ..." He had to lick his dry lips between
every jerky sentence, and I suddenly realised, as clearly as if he had
told me, that he knew what was behind that closed door, and that it
_was_ something terrible. "Here are the keys, Mr. Stanniford, but
remember my warning!"

He had a bunch of assorted keys in his hand, and the young man snatched
them from him. Then he thrust a knife under the discoloured seal and
jerked it off. The lamp was rattling and shaking in Perceval's hands, so
I took it from him and held it near the key-hole, while Stanniford tried
key after key. At last one turned in the lock, the door flew open, he
took one step into the room, and then, with a horrible cry, the young
man fell senseless at our feet.

If I had not given heed to the clerk's warning, and braced myself for a
shock, I should certainly have dropped the lamp. The room, windowless
and bare, was fitted up as a photographic laboratory, with a tap and
sink at the side of it. A shelf of bottles and measures stood at one
side, and a peculiar, heavy smell, partly chemical, partly animal,
filled the air. A single table and chair were in front of us, and at
this, with his back turned towards us, a man was seated in the act of
writing. His outline and attitude were as natural as life; but as the
light fell upon him, it made my hair rise to see that the nape of his
neck was black and wrinkled, and no thicker than my wrist. Dust lay upon
him--thick, yellow dust--upon his hair, his shoulders, his shrivelled,
lemon-coloured hands. His head had fallen forward upon his breast. His
pen still rested upon a discoloured sheet of paper.

"My poor master! My poor, poor master!" cried the clerk, and the tears
were running down his cheeks.

"What!" I cried, "Mr. Stanislaus Stanniford!"

"Here he has sat for seven years. Oh, why would he do it? I begged him,
I implored him, I went on my knees to him, but he would have his way.
You see the key on the table. He had locked the door upon the inside.
And he has written something. We must take it."

"Yes, yes, take it, and for God's sake, let us get out of this," I
cried; "the air is poisonous. Come, Stanniford, come!" Taking an arm
each, we half led and half carried the terrified man back to his own
room.

"It was my father!" he cried, as he recovered his consciousness. "He is
sitting there dead in his chair. You knew it, Perceval! This was what
you meant when you warned me."

"Yes, I knew it, Mr. Stanniford. I have acted for the best all along,
but my position has been a terribly difficult one. For seven years I
have known that your father was dead in that room."

"You knew it, and never told us!"

"Don't be harsh with me, Mr. Stanniford, sir! Make allowance for a man
who has had a hard part to play."

"My head is swimming round. I cannot grasp it!" He staggered up, and
helped himself from the brandy bottle. "These letters to my mother and
to myself--were they forgeries?"

"No, sir; your father wrote them and addressed them, and left them in my
keeping to be posted. I have followed his instructions to the very
letter in all things. He was my master, and I have obeyed him."

The brandy had steadied the young man's shaken nerves. "Tell me about
it. I can stand it now," said he.

"Well, Mr. Stanniford, you know that at one time there came a period of
great trouble upon your father, and he thought that many poor people
were about to lose their savings through his fault. He was a man who was
so tender-hearted that he could not bear the thought. It worried him and
tormented him, until he determined to end his life. Oh, Mr. Stanniford,
if you knew how I have prayed him and wrestled with him over it, you
would never blame me! And he in turn prayed me as no man has ever prayed
me before. He had made up his mind, and he would do it in any case, he
said; but it rested with me whether his death should be happy and easy
or whether it should be most miserable. I read in his eyes that he meant
what he said. And at last I yielded to his prayers, and I consented to
do his will.

"What was troubling him was this. He had been told by the first doctor
in London that his wife's heart would fail at the slightest shock. He
had a horror of accelerating her end, and yet his own existence had
become unendurable to him. How could he end himself without injuring
her?

"You know now the course that he took. He wrote the letter which she
received. There was nothing in it which was not literally true. When he
spoke of seeing her again so soon, he was referring to her own
approaching death, which he had been assured could not be delayed more
than a very few months. So convinced was he of this, that he only left
two letters to be forwarded at intervals after his death. She lived five
years, and I had no letters to send.

"He left another letter with me to be sent to you, sir, upon the
occasion of the death of your mother. I posted all these in Paris to
sustain the idea of his being abroad. It was his wish that I should say
nothing, and I have said nothing. I have been a faithful servant. Seven
years after his death, he thought no doubt that the shock to the
feelings of his surviving friends Would be lessened. He was always
considerate for others."

There was a silence for some time. It was broken by young Stanniford.

"I cannot blame you, Perceval. You have spared my mother a shock, which
would certainly have broken her heart. What is that paper?"

"It is what your father was writing, sir. Shall I read it to you?"

"Do so."

"'I have taken the poison, and I feel it working in my veins. It is
strange, but not painful. When these words are read I shall, if my
wishes have been faithfully carried out, have been dead many years.
Surely no one who has lost money through me will still bear me
animosity. And you, Felix, you will forgive me this family scandal. May
God find rest for a sorely wearied spirit!'"

"Amen!" we cried, all three.

TALES OF MEDICAL LIFE

VII

A PHYSIOLOGIST'S WIFE

Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to breakfast at the usual hour.
The presentation chiming-clock which stood between the terra-cotta busts
of Claude Bernard and of John Hunter upon the dining-room mantelpiece
had rung out the half-hour and the three-quarters. Now its golden hand
was verging upon the nine, and yet there were no signs of the master of
the house.

It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the twelve years that she had
kept house for him, his younger sister had never known him a second
behind his time. She sat now in front of the high silver coffee-pot,
uncertain whether to order the gong to be resounded or to wait on in
silence. Either course might be a mistake. Her brother was not a man who
permitted mistakes.

Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle height, thin, with
peering, puckered eyes, and the rounded shoulders which mark the bookish
woman. Her face was long and spare, flecked with colour above the
cheek-bones, with a reasonable, thoughtful forehead, and a dash of
absolute obstinacy in her thin lips and prominent chin. Snow-white cuffs
and collar, with a plain dark dress, cut with almost Quaker-like
simplicity, bespoke the primness of her taste. An ebony cross hung over
her flattened chest. She sat very upright in her chair, listening with
raised eyebrows, and swinging her eye-glasses backwards and forwards
with a nervous gesture which was peculiar to her.

Suddenly she gave a sharp, satisfied jerk of the head, and began to pour
out the coffee. From outside there came the dull thudding sound of heavy
feet Upon thick carpet. The door swung open, and the Professor entered
with a quick, nervous step. He nodded to his sister, and seating himself
at the other side of the table, began to open the small pile of letters
which lay beside his plate.

Professor Ainslie Grey was at that time forty-three years of age--nearly
twelve years older than his sister. His career had been a brilliant one.
At Edinburgh, at Cambridge, and at Vienna he had laid the foundations of
his great reputation, both in physiology and in zoology.

His pamphlet, "On the Mesoblastic Origin of Excitomotor Nerve Roots,"
had won him his fellowship of the Royal Society; and his researches,
"Upon the Nature of Bathybius, with some Remarks upon Lithococci," had
been translated into at least three European languages. He had been
referred to by one of the greatest living authorities as being the very
type and embodiment of all that was best in modern science. No wonder,
then, that when the commercial city of Birchespool decided to create a
medical school, they were only too glad to confer the chair of
physiology upon Mr. Ainslie Grey. They valued him the more from the
conviction that their class was only one step in his upward journey, and
that the first vacancy would remove him to some more illustrious seat of
learning.

In person he was not unlike his sister. The same eyes, the same contour,
the same intellectual forehead. His lips, however, were firmer, and his
long, thin lower jaw was sharper and more decided. He ran his finger and
thumb down it from time to time, as he glanced over his letters.

"Those maids are very noisy," he remarked, as a clack of tongues sounded
in the distance.

"It is Sarah," said his sister; "I shall speak about it."

She had handed over his coffee-cup, and was sipping at her own, glancing
furtively through her narrowed lids at the austere face of her brother.

"The first great advance of the human race," said the Professor, "was
when, by the development of their left frontal convolutions, they
attained the power of speech. Their second advance was when they learned
to control that power. Woman has not yet attained the second stage."

He half closed his eyes as he spoke, and thrust his chin forward, but as
he ceased he had a trick of suddenly opening both eyes very wide and
staring sternly at his interlocutor.

"I am not garrulous, John," said his sister.

"No, Ada; in many respects you approach the superior or male type."

The Professor bowed over his egg with the manner of one who utters a
courtly compliment; but the lady pouted, and gave an impatient little
shrug of her shoulders.

"You were late this morning, John," she remarked, after a pause.

"Yes, Ada; I slept badly. Some little cerebral congestion, no doubt due
to over-stimulation of the centres of thought. I have been a little
disturbed in my mind."

His sister stared across at him in astonishment. The Professor's mental
processes had hitherto been as regular as his habits. Twelve years'
continual intercourse had taught her that he lived in a serene and
rarefied atmosphere of scientific calm, high above the petty emotions
which affect humbler minds.

"You are surprised, Ada," he remarked. "Well, I cannot wonder at it. I
should have been surprised myself if I had been told that I was so
sensitive to vascular influences. For, after all, all disturbances are
vascular if you probe them deep enough. I am thinking of getting
married."

"Not Mrs. O'James?" cried Ada Grey, laying down her egg-spoon.

"My dear, you have the feminine quality of receptivity very remarkably
developed. Mrs. O'James is the lady in question."

"But you know so little of her. The Esdailes themselves know so little.
She is really only an acquaintance, although she is staying at The
Lindens. Would it not be wise to speak to Mrs. Esdaile first, John?"

"I do not think, Ada, that Mrs. Esdaile is at all likely to say anything
which would materially affect my course of action. I have given the
matter due consideration. The scientific mind is slow at arriving at
conclusions, but having once formed them, it is not prone to change.
Matrimony is the natural condition of the human race. I have, as you
know, been so engaged in academical and other work, that I have had no
time to devote to merely personal questions. It is different now, and I
see no valid reason why I should forego this opportunity of seeking a
suitable helpmate."

"And you are engaged?"

"Hardly that, Ada. I ventured yesterday to indicate to the lady that I
was prepared to submit to the common lot of humanity. I shall wait upon
her after my morning lecture, and learn how far my proposals meet with
her acquiescence. But you frown, Ada!"

His sister started, and made an effort to conceal her expression of
annoyance. She even stammered out some few words of congratulation, but
a vacant look had come into her brother's eyes, and he was evidently not
listening to her.

"I am sure, John," she said, "that I wish you the happiness which you
deserve. If I hesitated at all, it is because I know how much is at
stake, and because the thing is so sudden, so unexpected." Her thin
white hand stole up to the black cross upon her bosom. "These are
moments when we need guidance, John. If I could persuade you to turn to
spiritual----"

The Professor waved the suggestion away with a deprecating hand.

"It is useless to reopen that question," he said. "We cannot argue upon
it. You assume more than I can grant. I am forced to dispute your
premises. We have no common basis."

His sister sighed.

"You have no faith," she said.

"I have faith in those great evolutionary forces which are leading the
human race to some unknown but elevated goal."

"You believe in nothing."

"On the contrary, my dear Ada, I believe in the differentiation of
protoplasm."

She shook her head sadly. It was the one subject upon which she ventured
to dispute her brother's infallibility.

"This is rather beside the question," remarked the Professor, folding up
his napkin. "If I am not mistaken, there is some possibility of another
matrimonial event occurring in the family. Eh, Ada? What!"

His small eyes glittered with sly facetiousness as he shot a twinkle at
his sister. She sat very stiff, and traced patterns upon the cloth with
the sugar-tongs.

"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien----" said the Professor sonorously.

"Don't, John, don't!" cried Miss Ainslie Grey.

"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien," continued her brother inexorably, "is a man
who has already made his mark upon the science of the day. He is my
first and my most distinguished pupil. I assure you, Ada, that his
'Remarks upon the Bile-Pigments, with special reference to Urobilin,' is
likely to live as a classic. It is not too much to say that he has
revolutionised our views about Urobilin."

He paused, but his sister sat silent, with bent head and flushed cheeks.
The little ebony cross rose and fell with her hurried breathings.

"Dr. James M'Murdo O'Brien has, as you know, the offer of the
physiological chair at Melbourne. He has been in Australia five years,
and has a brilliant future before him. To-day he leaves us for
Edinburgh, and in two months' time he goes out to take over his new
duties. You know his feeling towards you. It rests with you as to
whether he goes out alone. Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine any
higher mission for a woman of culture than to go through life in the
company of a man who is capable of such a research as that which Dr.
James M'Murdo O'Brien has brought to a successful conclusion."

"He has not spoken to me," murmured the lady.

"Ah, there are signs which are more subtle than speech," said her
brother, wagging his head. "You are pale. Your vasomotor system is
excited. Your arterioles have contracted. Let me entreat you to compose
yourself. I think I hear the carriage. I fancy that you may have a
visitor this morning, Ada. You will excuse me now."

With a quick glance at the clock he strode off into the hall, and within
a few minutes he was rattling in his quiet, well-appointed brougham
through the brick-lined streets of Birchespool.

His lecture over, Professor Ainslie Grey paid a visit to his laboratory,
where he adjusted several scientific instruments, made a note as to the
progress of three separate infusions of bacteria, cut half a dozen
sections with a microtome, and finally resolved the difficulties of
seven different gentlemen, who were pursuing researches in as many
separate lines of inquiry. Having thus conscientiously and methodically
completed the routine of his duties, he returned to his carriage and
ordered the coachman to drive him to The Lindens. His face as he drove
was cold and impassive, but he drew his fingers from time to time down
his prominent chin with a jerky, twitchy movement.

The Lindens was an old-fashioned, ivy-clad house which had once been in
the country, but was now caught in the long, red-brick feelers of the
growing city. It still stood back from the road in the privacy of its
own grounds. A winding path, lined with laurel bushes, led to the arched
and porticoed entrance. To the right was a lawn, and at the far side,
under the shadow of a hawthorn, a lady sat in a garden-chair with a book
in her hands. At the click of the gate she started, and the Professor,
catching sight of her, turned away from the door, and strode in her
direction.

"What! won't you go in and see Mrs. Esdaile?" she asked, sweeping out
from under the shadow of the hawthorn.

She was a small woman, strongly feminine, from the rich coils of her
light-coloured hair to the dainty garden slipper which peeped from under
her cream-tinted dress. One tiny well-gloved hand was outstretched in
greeting, while the other pressed a thick, green-covered volume against
her side. Her decision and quick, tactful manner bespoke the mature
woman of the world; but her upraised face had preserved a girlish and
even infantile expression of innocence in its large, fearless grey eyes,
and sensitive, humorous mouth. Mrs. O'James was a widow, and she was
two-and-thirty years of age; but neither fact could have been deduced
from her appearance.

"You will surely go in and see Mrs. Esdaile," she repeated, glancing up
at him with eyes which had in them something between a challenge and a
caress.

"I did not come to see Mrs. Esdaile," he answered, with no relaxation of
his cold and grave manner; "I came to see you."

"I am sure I should be highly honoured," she said, with just the
slightest little touch of brogue in her accent. "What are the students
to do without their Professor?"

"I have already completed my academic duties. Take my arm, and we shall
walk in the sunshine. Surely we cannot wonder that Eastern people should
have made a deity of the sun. It is the great beneficent force of
Nature--man's ally against cold, sterility, and all that is abhorrent to
him. What were you reading?"

"Hale's _Matter and Life_."

The Professor raised his thick eyebrows.

"Hale!" he said, and then again in a kind of whisper, "Hale!"

"You differ from him?" she asked.

"It is not I who differ from him. I am only a monad--a thing of no
moment. The whole tendency of the highest plane of modern thought
differs from him. He defends the indefensible. He is an excellent
observer, but a feeble reasoner. I should not recommend you to found
your conclusions upon 'Hale.'"

"I must read _Nature's Chronicle_ to counteract his pernicious
influence," said Mrs. O'James, with a soft, cooing laugh.

_Nature's Chronicle_ was one of the many books in which Professor
Ainslie Grey had enforced the negative doctrines of scientific
agnosticism.

"It is a faulty work," said he; "I cannot recommend it. I would rather
refer you to the standard writings of some of my older and more eloquent
colleagues."

There was a pause in their talk as they paced up and down on the green,
velvet-like lawn in the genial sunshine.

"Have you thought at all," he asked at last, "of the matter upon which I
spoke to you last night?"

She said nothing, but walked by his side with her eyes averted and her
face aslant.

"I would not hurry you unduly," he continued. "I know that it is a
matter which can scarcely be decided off-hand. In my own case, it cost
me some thought before I ventured to make the suggestion. I am not an
emotional man, but I am conscious in your presence of the great
evolutionary instinct which makes either sex the complement of the
other."

"You believe in love, then?" she asked, with a twinkling, upward glance.

"I am forced to."

"And yet you can deny the soul?"

"How far these questions are psychic and how far material is still _sub
judice_," said the Professor, with an air of toleration. "Protoplasm may
prove to be the physical basis of love as well as of life."

"How inflexible you are!" she exclaimed; "you would draw love down to
the level of physics."

"Or draw physics up to the level of love."

"Come, that is much better," she cried, with her sympathetic laugh.
"That is really very pretty, and puts science in quite a delightful
light."

Her eyes sparkled, and she tossed her chin with a pretty, wilful air of
a woman who is mistress of the situation.

"I have reason to believe," said the Professor, "that my position here
will prove to be only a stepping-stone to some wider scene of scientific
activity. Yet, even here, my chair brings me in some fifteen hundred
pounds a year, which is supplemented by a few hundreds from my books. I
should therefore be in a position to provide you with those comforts to
which you are accustomed. So much for my pecuniary position. As to my
constitution, it has always been sound. I have never suffered from any
illness in my life, save fleeting attacks of cephalalgia, the result of
too prolonged a stimulation of the centres of cerebration. My father and
mother had no sign of any morbid diathesis, but I will not conceal from
you that my grandfather was afflicted with podagra."

Mrs. O'James looked startled.

"Is that very serious?" she asked.

"It is gout," said the Professor.

"Oh, is that all? It sounded much worse than that."

"It is a grave taint, but I trust that I shall not be a victim to
atavism. I have laid these facts before you because they are factors
which cannot be overlooked in forming your decision. May I ask now
whether you see your way to accepting my proposal?"

He paused in his walk, and looked earnestly and expectantly down at her.

A struggle was evidently going on in her mind. Her eyes were cast down,
her little slipper tapped the lawn, and her fingers played nervously
with her chatelain. Suddenly, with a sharp, quick gesture which had in
it something of _abandon_ and recklessness, she held out her hand to her
companion.

"I accept," she said.

They were standing under the shadow of the hawthorn. He stooped gravely
down, and kissed her glove-covered fingers.

"I trust that _you_ may never have cause to regret your decision," he
said.

"I trust that _you_ never may," she cried, with a heaving breast.

There were tears in her eyes, and her lips twitched with some strong
emotion.

"Come into the sunshine again," said he. "It is the great restorative.
Your nerves are shaken. Some little congestion of the medulla and pons.
It is always instructive to reduce psychic or emotional conditions to
their physical equivalents. You feel that your anchor is still firm in a
bottom of ascertained fact."

"But it is so dreadfully unromantic," said Mrs. O'James, with her old
twinkle.

"Romance is the offspring of imagination and of ignorance. Where science
throws her calm, clear light there is happily no room for romance."

"But is not love romance?" she asked.

"Not at all. Love has been taken away from the poets, and has been
brought within the domain of true science. It may prove to be one of the
great cosmic elementary forces. When the atom of hydrogen draws the atom
of chlorine towards it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric
acid, the force which it exerts may be intrinsically similar to that
which draws me to you. Attraction and repulsion appear to be the primary
forces. This is attraction."

"And here is repulsion," said Mrs. O'James, as a stout, florid lady came
sweeping across the lawn in their direction. "So glad you have come out,
Mrs. Esdaile! Here is Professor Grey."

"How do you do, Professor?" said the lady, with some little pomposity of
manner. "You were very wise to stay out here on so lovely a day. Is it
not heavenly?"

"It is certainly very fine weather," the Professor answered.

"Listen to the wind sighing in the trees!" cried Mrs. Esdaile, holding
up one finger. "It is Nature's lullaby. Could you not imagine it,
Professor Grey, to be the whisperings of angels?"

"The idea had not occurred to me, madam."

"Ah, Professor, I have always the same complaint against you. A want of
_rapport_ with the deeper meanings of Nature. Shall I say a want of
imagination? You do not feel an emotional thrill at the singing of that
thrush?"

"I confess that I am not conscious of one, Mrs. Esdaile."

"Or at the delicate tint of that background of leaves? See the rich
greens!"

"Chlorophyll," murmured the Professor.

"Science is so hopelessly prosaic. It dissects and labels, and loses
sight of the great things in its attention to the little ones. You have
a poor opinion of woman's intellect, Professor Grey. I think that I have
heard you say so."

"It is a question of avoirdupois," said the Professor, closing his eyes
and shrugging his shoulders. "The female cerebrum averages two ounces
less in weight than the male. No doubt there are exceptions. Nature is
always elastic."

"But the heaviest thing is not always the strongest," said Mrs. O'James,
laughing. "Isn't there a law of compensation in science? May we not hope
to make up in quality what we lack in quantity?"

"I think not," remarked the Professor gravely. "But there is your
luncheon-gong. No, thank you, Mrs. Esdaile, I cannot stay. My carriage
is waiting. Good-bye. Good-bye, Mrs. O'James."

He raised his hat and stalked slowly away among the laurel bushes.

"He has no taste," said Mrs. Esdaile--"no eye for beauty."

"On, the contrary," Mrs. O'James answered, with a saucy little jerk of
the chin. "He has just asked me to be his wife."

* * * * *

As Professor Ainslie Grey ascended the steps of his house, the hall-door
opened and a dapper gentleman stepped briskly out. He was somewhat
sall

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