The Cooler

Sports at Sea

2009-12-18T13:56:00.000-08:00

Sports at Sea by Dick Lawlor from Action Comics #3

South Sea Strategy by Captain Frank Thomas

2009-12-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

From Action Comics #1-2, 1938

Pictures 5

2009-07-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

Pictures 4

2009-07-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

Pictures 3

2009-07-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Pictures 2

2009-07-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

Pictures

2009-07-02T12:48:00.001-07:00

Superman vs Muhammad Ali print ads

2008-08-04T12:03:00.000-07:00

Scanned from Detective Comics #476, 1978.

Super Hang Ups

2008-08-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

The precursor to Fathead?

Scanned from Detective Comics #480, 1978.

Superman Hostess ad

2008-08-04T11:58:00.000-07:00

Scanned from The Brave and the Bold #128, 1976.

The Most Amazing Flying Saucer Story of All

2008-07-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

Scanned from Super DC Giant Presents Strange Flying Saucers Adventures #27, Sumer 1976

The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson

2008-06-11T06:12:00.000-07:00

The Room in the Tower (1912)
by E. F. Benson

It is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had at least one experience of an event or a sequence of circumstances which have come to his mind in sleep being subsequently realized in the material world. But, in my opinion, so far from this being a strange thing, it would be far odder if this fulfilment did not occasionally happen, since our dreams are, as a rule, concerned with people whom we know and places with which we are familiar, such as might very naturally occur in the awake and daylit world. True, these dreams are often broken into by some absurd and fantastic incident, which puts them out of court in regard to their subsequent fulfilment, but on the mere calculation of chances, it does not appear in the least unlikely that a dream imagined by anyone who dreams constantly should occasionally come true. Not long ago, for instance, I experienced such a fulfilment of a dream which seems to me in no way remarkable and to have no kind of psychical significance. The manner of it was as follows.

A certain friend of mine, living abroad, is amiable enough to write to me about once in a fortnight. Thus, when fourteen days or thereabouts have elapsed since I last heard from him, my mind, probably, either consciously or subconsciously, is expectant of a letter from him. One night last week I dreamed that as I was going upstairs to dress for dinner I heard, as I often heard, the sound of the postman's knock on my front door, and diverted my direction downstairs instead. There, among other correspondence, was a letter from him. Thereafter the fantastic entered, for on opening it I found inside the ace of diamonds, and scribbled across it in his well-known handwriting, "I am sending you this for safe custody, as you know it is running an unreasonable risk to keep aces in Italy." The next evening I was just preparing to go upstairs to dress when I heard the postman's knock, and did precisely as I had done in my dream. There, among other letters, was one from my friend. Only it did not contain the ace of diamonds. Had it done so, I should have attached more weight to the matter, which, as it stands, seems to me a perfectly ordinary coincidence. No doubt I consciously or subconsciously expected a letter from him, and this suggested to me my dream. Similarly, the fact that my friend had not written to me for a fortnight suggested to him that he should do so. But occasionally it is not so easy to find such an explanation, and for the following story I can find no explanation at all. It came out of the dark, and into the dark it has gone again.

All my life I have been a habitual dreamer: the nights are few, that is to say, when I do not find on awaking in the morning that some mental experience has been mine, and sometimes, all night long, apparently, a series of the most dazzling adventures befall me. Almost without exception these adventures are pleasant, though often merely trivial. It is of an exception that I am going to speak.

It was when I was about sixteen that a certain dream first came to me, and this is how it befell. It opened with my being set down at the door of a big red-brick house, where, I understood, I was going to stay. The servant who opened the door told me that tea was being served in the garden, and led me through a low dark-panelled hall, with a large open fireplace, on to a cheerful green lawn set round with flower beds. There were grouped about the tea-table a small party of people, but they were all strangers to me except one, who was a schoolfellow called Jack Stone, clearly the son of the house, and he introduced me to his mother and father and a couple of sisters. I was, I remember, somewhat astonished to find myself here, for the boy in question was scarcely known to me, and I rather disliked what I knew of him; moreover, he had left school nearly a year before. The afternoon was very hot, and an intolerable oppression reigned. On the far side of the lawn ran a red-brick wall, with an iron gate in its center, outside which stood a walnut tree. We sat in the shadow of the house opposite a row of long windows, inside which I could see a table with cloth laid, glimmering with glass and silver. This garden front of the house was very long, and at one end of it stood a tower of three stories, which looked to me much older than the rest of the building.

Before long, Mrs. Stone, who, like the rest of the party, had sat in absolute silence, said to me, "Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower."

Quite inexplicably my heart sank at her words. I felt as if I had known that I should have the room in the tower, and that it contained something dreadful and significant. Jack instantly got up, and I understood that I had to follow him. In silence we passed through the hall, and mounted a great oak staircase with many corners, and arrived at a small landing with two doors set in it. He pushed one of these open for me to enter, and without coming in himself, closed it after me. Then I knew that my conjecture had been right: there was something awful in the room, and with the terror of nightmare growing swiftly and enveloping me, I awoke in a spasm of terror.

Now that dream or variations on it occurred to me intermittently for fifteen years. Most often it came in exactly this form, the arrival, the tea laid out on the lawn, the deadly silence succeeded by that one deadly sentence, the mounting with Jack Stone up to the room in the tower where horror dwelt, and it always came to a close in the nightmare of terror at that which was in the room, though I never saw what it was. At other times I experienced variations on this same theme. Occasionally, for instance, we would be sitting at dinner in the dining-room, into the windows of which I had looked on the first night when the dream of this house visited me, but wherever we were, there was the same silence, the same sense of dreadful oppression and foreboding. And the silence I knew would always be broken by Mrs. Stone saying to me, "Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower." Upon which (this was invariable) I had to follow him up the oak staircase with many corners, and enter the place that I dreaded more and more each time that I visited it in sleep. Or, again, I would find myself playing cards still in silence in a drawing-room lit with immense chandeliers, that gave a blinding illumination. What the game was I have no idea; what I remember, with a sense of miserable anticipation, was that soon Mrs. Stone would get up and say to me, "Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower." This drawing-room where we played cards was next to the dining-room, and, as I have said, was always brilliantly illuminated, whereas the rest of the house was full of dusk and shadows. And yet, how often, in spite of those bouquets of lights, have I not pored over the cards that were dealt me, scarcely able for some reason to see them. Their designs, too, were strange: there were no red suits, but all were black, and among them there were certain cards which were black all over. I hated and dreaded those.

As this dream continued to recur, I got to know the greater part of the house. There was a smoking-room beyond the drawing-room, at the end of a passage with a green baize door. It was always very dark there, and as often as I went there I passed somebody whom I could not see in the doorway coming out. Curious developments, too, took place in the characters that peopled the dream as might happen to living persons. Mrs. Stone, for instance, who, when I first saw her, had been black-haired, became gray, and instead of rising briskly, as she had done at first when she said, "Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower," got up very feebly, as if the strength was leaving her limbs. Jack also grew up, and became a rather ill-looking young man, with a brown moustache, while one of the sisters ceased to appear, and I understood she was married.

Then it so happened that I was not visited by this dream for six months or more, and I began to hope, in such inexplicable dread did I hold it, that it had passed away for good. But one night after this interval I again found myself being shown out onto the lawn for tea, and Mrs. Stone was not there, while the others were all dressed in black. At once I guessed the reason, and my heart leaped at the thought that perhaps this time I should not have to sleep in the room in the tower, and though we usually all sat in silence, on this occasion the sense of relief made me talk and laugh as I had never yet done. But even then matters were not altogether comfortable, for no one else spoke, but they all looked secretly at each other. And soon the foolish stream of my talk ran dry, and gradually an apprehension worse than anything I had previously known gained on me as the light slowly faded.

Suddenly a voice which I knew well broke the stillness, the voice of Mrs. Stone, saying, "Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower." It seemed to come from near the gate in the red-brick wall that bounded the lawn, and looking up, I saw that the grass outside was sown thick with gravestones. A curious greyish light shone from them, and I could read the lettering on the grave nearest me, and it was, "In evil memory of Julia Stone." And as usual Jack got up, and again I followed him through the hall and up the staircase with many corners. On this occasion it was darker than usual, and when I passed into the room in the tower I could only just see the furniture, the position of which was already familiar to me. Also there was a dreadful odor of decay in the room, and I woke screaming.

The dream, with such variations and developments as I have mentioned, went on

at intervals for fifteen years. Sometimes I would dream it two or three nights in succession; once, as I have said, there was an intermission of six months, but taking a reasonable average, I should say that I dreamed it quite as often as once in a month. It had, as is plain, something of nightmare about it, since it always ended in the same appalling terror, which so far from getting less, seemed to me to gather fresh fear every time that I experienced it. There was, too, a strange and dreadful consistency about it. The characters in it, as I have mentioned, got regularly older, death and marriage visited this silent family, and I never in the dream, after Mrs. Stone had died, set eyes on her again. But it was always her voice that told me that the room in the tower was prepared for me, and whether we had tea out on the lawn, or the scene was laid in one of the rooms overlooking it, I could always see her gravestone standing just outside the iron gate. It was the same, too, with the married daughter; usually she was not present, but once or twice she returned again, in company with a man, whom I took to be her husband. He, too, like the rest of them, was always silent. But, owing to the constant repetition of the dream, I had

ceased to attach, in my waking hours, any significance to it. I never met Jack Stone again during all those years, nor did I ever see a house that resembled this dark house of my dream. And then something happened.

I had been in London in this year, up till the end of the July, and during the first week in August went down to stay with a friend in a house he had taken for the summer months, in the Ashdown Forest district of Sussex. I left London early, for John Clinton was to meet me at Forest Row Station, and we were going to spend the day golfing, and go to his house in the evening. He had his motor with him, and we set off, about five of the afternoon, after a thoroughly delightful day, for the drive, the distance being some ten miles. As it was still so early we did not have tea at the club house, but waited till we should get home. As we drove, the weather, which up till then had been, though hot, deliciously fresh, seemed to me to alter in quality, and become very stagnant and oppressive, and I felt that indefinable sense of ominous apprehension that I am accustomed to before thunder. John, however, did not share my views, attributing my loss of lightness to the fact that I had lost both my matches. Events proved, however, that I was right, though I do not think that the thunderstorm that broke that night was the sole cause of my depression.

Our way lay through deep high-banked lanes, and before we had gone very far I fell asleep, and was only awakened by the stopping of the motor. And with a sudden thrill, partly of fear but chiefly of curiosity, I found myself standing in the doorway of my house of dream. We went, I half wondering whether or not I was dreaming still, through a low oak-panelled hall, and out onto the lawn, where tea was laid in the shadow of the house. It was set in flower beds, a red-brick wall, with a gate in it, bounded one side, and out beyond that was a space of rough grass with a walnut tree. The facade of the house was very long, and at one end stood a three-storied tower, markedly older than the rest.

Here for the moment all resemblance to the repeated dream ceased. There was no

silent and somehow terrible family, but a large assembly of exceedingly cheerful persons, all of whom were known to me. And in spite of the horror with which the dream itself had always filled me, I felt nothing of it now that the scene of it was thus reproduced before me. But I felt intensest curiosity as to what was going to happen.

Tea pursued its cheerful course, and before long Mrs. Clinton got up. And at that moment I think I knew what she was going to say. She spoke to me, and what she said was:

"Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower."

At that, for half a second, the horror of the dream took hold of me again. But it quickly passed, and again I felt nothing more than the most intense curiosity. It was not very long before it was amply satisfied.

John turned to me.

"Right up at the top of the house," he said, "but I think you'll be comfortable. We're absolutely full up. Would you like to go and see it now? By Jove, I believe that you are right, and that we are going to have a thunderstorm. How dark it has become."

I got up and followed him. We passed through the hall, and up the perfectly familiar staircase. Then he opened the door, and I went in. And at that moment sheer unreasoning terror again possessed me. I did not know what I feared: I simply feared. Then like a sudden recollection, when one remembers a name which has long escaped the memory, I knew what I feared. I feared Mrs. Stone, whose grave with the sinister inscription, "In evil memory," I had so often seen in my dream, just beyond the lawn which lay below my window. And then once more the fear passed so completely that I wondered what there was to fear, and I found myself, sober and quiet and sane, in the room in the tower, the name of which I had so often heard in my dream, and the scene of which was so familiar.

I looked around it with a certain sense of proprietorship, and found that nothing had been changed from the dreaming nights in which I knew it so well. Just to the left of the door was the bed, lengthways along the wall, with the head of it in the angle. In a line with it was the fireplace and a small bookcase; opposite the door the outer wall was pierced by two lattice-paned windows, between which stood the dressing-table, while ranged along the fourth wall was the washing-stand and a big cupboard. My luggage had already been unpacked, for the furniture of dressing and undressing lay orderly on the wash-stand and toilet-table, while my dinner clothes were spread out on the coverlet of the bed. And then, with a sudden start of unexplained dismay, I saw that there were two rather conspicuous objects which I had not seen before in my dreams: one a life-sized oil painting of Mrs. Stone, the other a black-and-white sketch of Jack Stone, representing him as he had appeared to me only a week before in the last of the series of these repeated dreams, a rather secret and evil-looking man of about thirty. His picture hung between the windows, looking straight across the room to the other portrait, which hung at the side of the bed. At that I looked next, and as I looked I felt once more the horror of nightmare seize me.

It represented Mrs. Stone as I had seen her last in my dreams: old and withered and white-haired. But in spite of the evident feebleness of body, a dreadful exuberance and vitality shone through the envelope of flesh, an exuberance wholly malign, a vitality that foamed and frothed with unimaginable evil. Evil beamed from the narrow, leering eyes; it laughed in the demon-like mouth. The whole face was instinct with some secret and appalling mirth; the hands, clasped together on the knee, seemed shaking with suppressed and nameless glee. Then I saw also that it was signed in the left-hand bottom corner, and wondering who the artist could be, I looked more closely, and read the inscription, "Julia Stone by Julia Stone."

There came a tap at the door, and John Clinton entered.

"Got everything you want?" he asked.

"Rather more than I want," said I, pointing to the picture.

He laughed.

"Hard-featured old lady," he said. "By herself, too, I remember. Anyhow she can't have flattered herself much."

"But don't you see?" said I. "It's scarcely a human face at all. It's the face of some witch, of some devil."

He looked at it more closely.

"Yes; it isn't very pleasant," he said. "Scarcely a bedside manner, eh? Yes; I can imagine getting the nightmare if I went to sleep with that close by my bed. I'll have it taken down if you like."

"I really wish you would," I said. He rang the bell, and with the help of a servant we detached the picture and carried it out onto the landing, and put it with its face to the wall.

"By Jove, the old lady is a weight," said John, mopping his forehead. "I wonder if she had something on her mind."

The extraordinary weight of the picture had struck me too. I was about to reply, when I caught sight of my own hand. There was blood on it, in considerable quantities, covering the whole palm.

"I've cut myself somehow," said I.

John gave a little startled exclamation.

"Why, I have too," he said.

Simultaneously the footman took out his handkerchief and wiped his hand with it. I saw that there was blood also on his handkerchief.

John and I went back into the tower room and washed the blood off; but neither on his hand nor on mine was there the slightest trace of a scratch or cut. It seemed to me that, having ascertained this, we both, by a sort of tacit consent, did not allude to it again. Something in my case had dimly occurred to me that I did not wish to think about. It was but a conjecture, but I fancied that I knew the same thing had occurred to him.

The heat and oppression of the air, for the storm we had expected was still undischarged, increased very much after dinner, and for some time most of the party, among whom were John Clinton and myself, sat outside on the path bounding the lawn, where we had had tea. The night was absolutely dark, and no twinkle of star or moon ray could penetrate the pall of cloud that overset the sky. By degrees our assembly thinned, the women went up to bed, men dispersed to the smoking or billiard room, and by eleven o'clock my host and I were the only two left. All the evening I thought that he had something on his mind, and as soon as we were alone he spoke.

"The man who helped us with the picture had blood on his hand, too, did you notice?" he said.

"I asked him just now if he had cut himself, and he said he supposed he had, but that he could find no mark of it. Now where did that blood come from?"

By dint of telling myself that I was not going to think about it, I had succeeded in not doing so, and I did not want, especially just at bedtime, to be reminded of it.

"I don't know," said I, "and I don't really care so long as the picture of Mrs. Stone is not by my bed."

He got up.

"But it's odd," he said. "Ha! Now you'll see another odd thing."

A dog of his, an Irish terrier by breed, had come out of the house as we talked. The door behind us into the hall was open, and a bright oblong of light shone across the lawn to the iron gate which led on to the rough grass outside, where the walnut tree stood. I saw that the dog had all his hackles up, bristling with rage and fright; his lips were curled back from his teeth, as if he was ready to spring at something, and he was growling to himself. He took not the slightest notice of his master or me, but stiffly and tensely walked across the grass to the iron gate. There he stood for a moment, looking through the bars and still growling. Then of a sudden his courage seemed to desert him: he gave one long howl, and scuttled back to the house with a curious crouching sort of movement.

"He does that half-a-dozen times a day." said John. "He sees something which he both hates and fears."

I walked to the gate and looked over it. Something was moving on the grass outside, and soon a sound which I could not instantly identify came to my ears. Then I remembered what it was: it was the purring of a cat. I lit a match, and saw the purrer, a big blue Persian, walking round and round in a little circle just outside the gate, stepping high and ecstatically, with tail carried aloft like a banner. Its eyes were bright and shining, and every now and then it put its head down and sniffed at the grass.

I laughed.

"The end of that mystery, I am afraid." I said. "Here's a large cat having Walpurgis night all alone."

"Yes, that's Darius," said John. "He spends half the day and all night there. But that's not the end of the dog mystery, for Toby and he are the best of friends, but the beginning of the cat mystery. What's the cat doing there? And why is Darius pleased, while Toby is terror-stricken?"

At that moment I remembered the rather horrible detail of my dreams when I saw through the gate, just where the cat was now, the white tombstone with the sinister inscription. But before I could answer the rain began, as suddenly and heavily as if a tap had been turned on, and simultaneously the big cat squeezed through the bars of the gate, and came leaping across the lawn to the house for shelter. Then it sat in the doorway, looking out eagerly into the dark. It spat and struck at John with its paw, as he pushed it in, in order to close the door.

Somehow, with the portrait of Julia Stone in the passage outside, the room in the tower had absolutely no alarm for me, and as I went to bed, feeling very sleepy and heavy, I had nothing more than interest for the curious incident about our bleeding hands, and the conduct of the cat and dog. The last thing I looked at before I put out my light was the square empty space by my bed where the portrait had been. Here the paper was of its original full tint of dark red: over the rest of the walls it had faded. Then I blew out my candle and instantly fell asleep.

My awaking was equally instantaneous, and I sat bolt upright in bed under the impression that some bright light had been flashed in my face, though it was now absolutely pitch dark. I knew exactly where I was, in the room which I had dreaded in dreams, but no horror that I ever felt when asleep approached the fear that now invaded and froze my brain. Immediately after a peal of thunder crackled just above the house, but the probability that it was only a flash of lightning which awoke me gave no reassurance to my galloping heart. Something I knew was in the room with me, and instinctively I put out my right hand, which was nearest the wall, to keep it away. And my hand touched the edge of a picture-frame hanging close to me.

I sprang out of bed, upsetting the small table that stood by it, and I heard my watch, candle, and matches clatter onto the floor. But for the moment there was no need of light, for a blinding flash leaped out of the clouds, and showed me that by my bed again hung the picture of Mrs. Stone. And instantly the room went into blackness again. But in that flash I saw another thing also, namely a figure that leaned over the end of my bed, watching me. It was dressed in some close-clinging white garment, spotted and stained with mold, and the face was that of the portrait.

Overhead the thunder cracked and roared, and when it ceased and the deathly stillness succeeded, I heard the rustle of movement coming nearer me, and, more horrible yet, perceived an odor of corruption and decay. And then a hand was laid on the side of my neck, and close beside my ear I heard quick-taken, eager breathing. Yet I knew that this thing, though it could be perceived by touch, by smell, by eye and by ear, was still not of this earth, but something that had passed out of the body and had power to make itself manifest. Then a voice, already familiar to me, spoke.

"I knew you would come to the room in the tower," it said. "I have been long waiting for you. At last you have come. Tonight I shall feast; before long we will feast together."

And the quick breathing came closer to me; I could feel it on my neck.

At that the terror, which I think had paralyzed me for the moment, gave way to the wild instinct of self-preservation. I hit wildly with both arms, kicking out at the same moment, and heard a little animal-squeal, and something soft dropped with a thud beside me. I took a couple of steps forward, nearly tripping up over whatever it was that lay there, and by the merest good-luck found the handle of the door. In another second I ran out on the landing, and had banged the door behind me. Almost at the same moment I heard a door open somewhere below, and John Clinton, candle in hand, came running upstairs.

"What is it?" he said. "I sleep just below you, and heard a noise as if--Good heavens, there's blood on your shoulder."

I stood there, so he told me afterwards, swaying from side to side, white as a sheet, with the mark on my shoulder as if a hand covered with blood had been laid there.

"It's in there," I said, pointing. "She, you know. The portrait is in there, too, hanging up on the place we took it from."

At that he laughed.

"My dear fellow, this is mere nightmare," he said.

He pushed by me, and opened the door, I standing there simply inert with terror, unable to stop him, unable to move.

"Phew! What an awful smell," he said.

Then there was silence; he had passed out of my sight behind the open door. Next moment he came out again, as white as myself, and instantly shut it.

"Yes, the portrait's there," he said, "and on the floor is a thing--a thing spotted with earth, like what they bury people in. Come away, quick, come away."

How I got downstairs I hardly know. An awful shuddering and nausea of the spirit rather than of the flesh had seized me, and more than once he had to place my feet upon the steps, while every now and then he cast glances of terror and apprehension up the stairs. But in time we came to his dressing-room on the floor below, and there I told him what I have here described.

The sequel can be made short; indeed, some of my readers have perhaps already guessed what it was, if they remember that inexplicable affair of the churchyard at West Fawley, some eight years ago, where an attempt was made three times to bury the body of a certain woman who had committed suicide. On each occasion the coffin was found in the course of a few days again protruding from the ground. After the third attempt, in order that the thing should not be talked about, the body was buried elsewhere in unconsecrated ground. Where it was buried was just outside the iron gate of the garden belonging to the house where this woman had lived. She had committed suicide in a room at the top of the tower in that house. Her name was Julia Stone.

Subsequently the body was again secretly dug up, and the coffin was found to be full of blood.

THE VAMPYRE

2008-01-03T08:15:00.000-08:00

THE VAMPYRE by John Polidori

1819 the complete text to the original Gothic Vampire Story

It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon London winter, there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman more remarkable for his singularities, than his rank. He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein. Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention, that he might by a look quell it and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned.
Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention.
In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a wanner tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the female hunters after notoriety attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection: Lady Mercer, who had been the mockery of every monster shewn in drawing-rooms since her marriage, threw herself in his way, and did all but put on the dress of a mountebank, to attract his notice -- though in vain; -- when she stood before him, though his eyes were apparently fixed upon hers, still it seemed as if they were unperceived; -- even her unappalled impudence was baffled, and she left the field. But though the common adultress could not influence even the guidance of his eyes, it was not that the female sex was indifferent to him: yet such was the apparent caution with which he spoke to the virtuous wife and innocent daughter, that few knew he ever addressed himself to females. He had, however, the reputation of a winning tongue; and whether it was that it even overcame the dread of his singular character, or that they were moved by his apparent hatred of vice, he was as often among those females who form the boast of their sex from their domestic virtues, as among those who sully it by their vices.
About the same time, there came to London a young gentleman of the name of Aubrey: he was an orphan left with an only sister in the possession of great wealth, by parents who died while he was yet in childhood. Left also to himself by guardians, who thought it their duty merely to take care of his fortune, while they relinquished the more important charge of his mind to the care of mercenary subalterns, he cultivated more his imagination than his judgment. He had, hence, that high romantic feeling of honour and candour, which daily ruins so many milliners' apprentices. He believed all to sympathise with virtue, and thought that vice was thrown in by Providence merely for the picturesque effect of the scene, as we see in romances: he thought that the misery of a cottage merely consisted in the vesting of clothes, which were as warm, but which were better adapted to the painter's eye by their irregular folds and various coloured patches.
He thought, in fine, that the dreams of poets were the realities of life. He was handsome, frank, and rich: for these reasons, upon his entering into the gay circles, many mothers surrounded him, striving which should describe with least truth their languishing or romping favourites: the daughters at the same time, by their brightening countenances when he approached, and by their sparkling eyes, when he opened his lips, soon led him into false notions of his talents and his merit. Attached as he was to the romance of his solitary hours, he was startled at finding, that, except in the tallow and wax candles that flickered, not from the presence of a ghost, but from want of snuffing, there was no foundation in real life for any of that congeries of pleasing pictures and descriptions contained in those volumes, from which he had formed his study. Finding, however, some compensation in his gratified vanity, he was about to relinquish his dreams, when the extraordinary being we have above described, crossed him in his career.
He watched him; and the very impossibility of forming an idea of the character of a man entirely absorbed in himself, who gave few other signs of his observation of external objects, than the tacit assent to their existence, implied by the avoidance of their contact: allowing his imagination to picture every thing that flattered its propensity to extravagant ideas, he soon formed this object into the hero of a romance, and determined to observe the offspring of his fancy, rather than the person before him. He became acquainted with him, paid him attentions, and so far advanced upon his notice, that his presence was always recognised. He gradually learnt that Lord Ruthven's affairs were embarrassed, and soon found, from the notes of preparation in ---- Street, that he was about to travel.
Desirous of gaining some information respecting this singular character, who, till now, had only whetted his curiosity, he hinted to his guardians, that it was time for him to perform the tour, which for many generations has been thought necessary to enable the young to take some rapid steps in the career of vice towards putting themselves upon an equality with the aged, and not allowing them to appear as if fallen from the skies, whenever scandalous intrigues are mentioned as the subjects of pleasantry or of praise, according to the degree of skill shewn in carrying them on. They consented: and Aubrey immediately mentioning his intentions to Lord Ruthven, was surprised to receive from him a proposal to join him. Flattered such a mark of esteem from him, who, apparently, had nothing in common with other men, he gladly accepted it, and in a few days they had passed the circling waters.
Hitherto, Aubrey had had no opportunity of studying Lord Ruthven's character, and now he found, that, though many more of his actions were exposed to his view, the results offered different conclusions from the apparent motives to his conduct. His companion was profuse in his liberality; -- the idle, the vagabond, and the beggar, received from his hand more than enough to relieve their immediate wants. But Aubrey could not avoid remarking, that it was not upon the virtuous, reduced to indigence by the misfortunes attendant even upon virtue, that he bestowed his alms; -- these were sent from the door with hardly suppressed sneers; but when the profligate came to ask something, not to relieve his wants, but to allow him to wallow in his lust, to sink him still deeper in his iniquity, he was sent away with rich charity. This was, however, attributed by him to the greater importunity of the vicious, which generally prevails over the retiring bashfulness of the virtuous indigent.
There was one circumstance about the charity of his Lordship, which was still more impressed upon his mind: all those upon whom it was bestowed, inevitably found that there was a curse upon it, for they were all either led to the scaffold, or sunk to the lowest and the most abject misery. At Brussels and other towns through which they passed, Aubrey was surprised at the apparent eagerness with which his companion sought for the centres of all fashionable vice; there he entered into all the spirit of the faro table: he betted and always gambled with success, except where the known sharper was his antagonist, and then he lost even more than he gained; but it was always with the same unchanging face, with which he generally watched the society around: it was not, however, so when he encountered the rash youthful novice, or the luckless father of a numerous family; then his very wish seemed fortune's law -- this apparent abstractedness of mind was laid aside, and his eyes sparkled with more fire than that of the cat whilst dallying with the half-dead mouse.
In every town, he left the formerly affluent youth, torn from the circle he adorned, cursing, in the solitude of a dungeon, the fate that had drawn him within the reach of this fiend; whilst many a father sat frantic, amidst the speaking looks of mute hungry children, without a single farthing of his late immense wealth, wherewith to buy even sufficient to satisfy their present craving. Yet he took no money from the gambling table; but immediately lost, to the ruiner of many, the last gilder he had just snatched from the convulsive grasp of the innocent: this might but be the result of a certain degree of knowledge, which was not, however, capable of combating the cunning of the more experienced. Aubrey often wished to represent this to his friend, and beg him to resign that charity and pleasure which proved the ruin of all, and did not tend to his own profit; but he delayed it -- for each day he hoped his friend would give him some opportunity of speaking frankly and openly to him; however, this never occurred. Lord Ruthven in his carriage, and amidst the various wild and rich scenes of nature, was always the same: his eye spoke less than his lip; and though Aubrey was near the object of his curiosity, he obtained no greater gratification from it than the constant excitement of vainly wishing to break that mystery, which to his exalted imagination began to assume the appearance of something supernatural.
They soon arrived at Rome, and Aubrey for a time lost sight of his companion; he left him in daily attendance upon the morning circle of an Italian countess, whilst he went in search of the memorials of another almost deserted city. Whilst he was thus engaged, letters arrived from England, which he opened with eager impatience; the first was from his sister, breathing nothing but affection; the others were from his guardians, the latter astonished him; if it had before entered into his imagination that there was an evil power resident in his companion these seemed to give him almost sufficient reason for the belief. His guardians insisted upon his immediately leaving his friend, and urged that his character was dreadfully vicious, for that the possession of irresistible powers of seduction, rendered his licentious habits more dangerous to society. It had been discovered, that his contempt for the adultress had not originated in hatred of her character; but that he had required, to enhance his gratification, that his victim, the partner of his guilt, should be hurled from the pinnacle of unsullied virtue, down to the lowest abyss of infamy and degradation: in fine, that all those females whom he had sought, apparently on account of their virtue, had, since his departure, thrown even the mask aside, and had not scrupled to expose the whole deformity of their vices to the public gaze.
Aubrey determined upon leaving one, whose character had not shown a single bright point on which to rest the eye. He resolved to invent some plausible pretext for abandoning him altogether, purposing, in the mean while, to watch him more closely, and to let no slight circumstances pass by unnoticed. He entered into the same circle, and soon perceived, that his Lordship was endeavouring to work upon the inexperience of the daughter of the lady whose house he chiefly frequented. In Italy, it is seldom that an unmarried female is met with in society; he was therefore obliged to carry on his plans in secret; but Aubrey's eye followed him in all his windings, and soon discovered that an assignation had been appointed, which would most likely end in the ruin of an innocent, though thoughtless girl.
Losing no time, he entered the apartment of Lord Ruthven, and abruptly asked him his intentions with respect to the lady, informing him at the same time that he was aware of his being about to meet her that very night. Lord Ruthven answered, that his intentions were such as he supposed all would have upon such an occasion; and upon being pressed whether he intended to marry her, merely laughed. Aubrey retired; and, immediately writing a note, to say, that from that moment he must decline accompanying his Lordship in the remainder of their proposed tour, he ordered his servant to seek other apartments, and calling upon the mother of the lady informed her of all he knew, not only with regard to her daughter, but also concerning the character of his Lordship. The assignation was prevented. Lord Ruthven next day merely sent his servant to notify his complete assent to a separation; but did not hint any suspicion of his plans having been foiled by Aubrey's interposition.
Having left Rome, Aubrey directed his steps towards Greece, and crossing the Peninsula, soon found himself at Athens. He then fixed residence in the house of a Greek; and soon occupied himself in tracing the faded records of ancient glory upon monuments that apparently, ashamed of chronicling the deeds of freemen only before slaves, had hidden themselves beneath the sheltering soil or many coloured lichen. Under the same roof as himself, existed a being, so beautiful and delicate, that she might have formed the model for a painter, wishing to portray on canvass the promised hope of the faithful in Mahomet's paradise, save that her eyes spoke too much mind for any one to think she could belong to those who had no souls. As she danced upon the plain, or tripped along the mountain's side, one would have thought the gazelle a poor type of her beauties; for who would have exchanged her eye, apparently the eye of animated nature, for that sleepy luxurious look of the animal suited but to the taste of an epicure. The light step of Ianthe often accompanied Aubrey in his search after antiquities, and often would the unconscious girl, engaged in the pursuit of a Kashmere butterfly, show the whole beauty of her form, boating as it were upon the wind, to the eager gaze of him, who forgot the letters he had just decyphered upon an almost effaced tablet, in the contemplation of her sylph-like figure.
Often would her tresses falling, as she flitted around, exhibit in the sun's ray such delicately brilliant and swiftly fading hues, as might well excuse the forgetfulness of the antiquary, who let escape from his mind the very object he had before thought of vital importance to the proper interpretation of a passage in Pausanias. But why attempt to describe charms which all feel, but none can appreciate? -- It was innocence, youth, and beauty, unaffected by crowded drawing-rooms and stifling balls. Whilst he drew those remains of which he wished to preserve a memorial for his future hours, she would stand by, and watch the magic effects of his pencil, in tracing the scenes of her native place; she would then describe to him the circling dance upon the open plain, would paint to him in all the glowing colours of youthful memory, the marriage pomp she remembered viewing in her infancy; and then, turning to subjects that had evidently made a greater impression upon her mind, would tell him all the supernatural tales of her nurse.
Her earnestness and apparent belief of what she narrated, excited the interest even of Aubrey; and often as she told him the tale of the living vampyre, who had passed years amidst his friends, and dearest ties, forced every year, by feeding upon the life of a lovely female to prolong his existence for the ensuing months, his blood would run cold, whilst he attempted to laugh her out of such idle and horrible fantasies; but Ianthe cited to him the names of old men, who had at last detected one living among themselves, after several of their near relatives and children had been found marked with the stamp of the fiend's appetite; and when she found him so incredulous, she begged of him to believe her, for it had been remarked, that those who had dared to question their existence, always had some proof given, which obliged them, with grief and heartbreaking, to confess it was true. She detailed to him the traditional appearance of these monsters, and his horror was increased by hearing a pretty accurate description of Lord Ruthven; he, however, still persisted in persuading her, that there could be no truth in her fears, though at the same time he wondered at the many coincidences which had all tended to excite a belief in the supernatural power of Lord Ruthven.
Aubrey began to attach himself more and more to Ianthe; her innocence, so contrasted with all the affected virtues of the women among whom he had sought for his vision of romance, won his heart and while he ridiculed the idea of a young man of English habits, marrying an uneducated Greek girl, still he found himself more and more attached to the almost fairy form before him. He would tear himself at times from her, and, forming a plan for some antiquarian research, would depart, determined not to return until his object was attained; but he always found it impossible to fix his attention upon the ruins around him, whilst in his mind he retained an image that seemed alone the rightful possessor of his thoughts. Ianthe was unconscious of his love, and was ever the same frank infantile being he had first known.
She always seemed to part from him with reluctance; but it was because she had no longer any one with whom she could visit her favourite haunts, whilst her guardian was occupied in sketching or uncovering some fragment which had yet escaped the destructive hand of time. She had appealed to her parents on the subject of Vampyres, and they both, with several present, affirmed their existence, pale with horror at the very name. Soon after, Aubrey determined to proceed upon one of his excursions, which was to detain him for a few hours; when they heard the name of the place, they all at once begged of him not to return at night, as he must necessarily pass through a wood, where no Greek would ever remain, after the day had closed, upon any consideration. They described it as the resort of the vampyres in their nocturnal orgies and denounced the most heavy evils as impending upon him who dared to cross their path. Aubrey made light of their representations, and tried to laugh them out of the idea; but when he saw them shudder at his daring thus to mock a superior, infernal power, the very name of which apparently made their blood freeze, he was silent.
Next morning Aubrey set off upon his excursion unattended; he was surprised to observe the melancholy face of his host, and was concerned to find that his words, mocking the belief of those horrible fiends, had inspired them with such terror. When he was about to depart, Ianthe came to the side of his horse, and earnestly begged of him to return, ere night allowed the power of these beings to be put in action; -- he promised. He was, however, so occupied in his research, that he did not perceive that day-light would soon end, and that in the horizon there was one of those specks which, in the warmer climates, so rapidly gather into a tremendous mass, and pour all their rage upon the devoted country. -- He at last, however, mounted his horse, determined to make up by speed for his delay: but it was too late. Twilight, in these southern climates, is almost unknown; immediately the sun sets, night begins: and ere he had advanced far, the power of the storm was above -- its echoing thunders had scarcely an interval of rest; -- its thick heavy rain forced its way through the canopying foliage, whilst the blue forked lightning seemed to fall and radiate at his very feet. Suddenly his horse took fright, and he was carried with dreadful rapidity through the entangled forest.
The animal at last, through fatigue, stopped, and he found, by the glare of lightning, that he was in the neighbourhood of a hovel that hardly lifted itself up from the masses of dead leaves and brushwood which surrounded it. Dismounting, he approached, hoping to find some one to guide him to the town, or at least trusting to obtain shelter from the pelting of the storm. As he approached, the thunders, for a moment silent, allowed him to hear the dreadful shrieks of a woman mingling with the stifled, exultant mockery of a laugh, continued in one almost unbroken sound; -- he was startled: but, roused by the thunder which again rolled over his head, he, with a sudden effort, forced open the door of the hut. He found himself in utter darkness: the sound, however, guided him. He was apparently unperceived; for, though he called, still the sounds continued, and no notice was taken of him. He found himself in contact with some one, whom he immediately seized; when a voice cried, "Again baffled!" to which a loud laugh succeeded; and he felt himself grappled by one whose strength seemed superhuman: determined to sell his life as dearly as he could, he struggled; but it was in vain: he was lifted from his feet and hurled with enormous force against the ground: -- his enemy threw himself upon him, and kneeling upon his breast, had placed his hands upon his throat when the glare of many torches penetrating through the hole that gave light in the day, disturbed him; -- he instantly rose, and, leaving his prey, rushed through the door, and in a moment the crashing of branches, as he broke through the wood, was no longer heard.
The storm was now still; and Aubrey, incapable of moving, was soon heard by those without. They entered; the light of their torches fell upon mud walls, and the thatch loaded on every individual straw with heavy flakes of soot. At the desire of Aubrey they searched for her who had attracted him by her cries; he was again left in darkness; but what was his horror, when the light of the torches once more burst upon him, to perceive the airy form of his fair conductress brought in a lifeless corpse. He shut his eyes, hoping that it was but a vision arising from his disturbed imagination; but he again saw the same form, when he unclosed them, stretched by his side.
There was no colour upon her cheek, not even upon her lip; yet there was a stillness about her face that seemed almost as attaching as the life that once dwelt there: -- upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein: -- to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, "A Vampyre! a Vampyre!" A litter was quickly formed, and Aubrey was laid by the side of her who had lately been to him the object of so many bright and fairy visions, now fallen; with the flower of life that had died within her. He knew not what his thoughts were -- his mind was benumbed and seemed to shun reflection and take refuge in vacancy; -- he held almost unconsciously in his hand a naked dagger of a particular construction, which had been found in the hut.
They were soon met by different parties who had been engaged in the search of her whom a mother had missed. Their lamentable cries as they approached the city, forewarned the parents of some dreadful catastrophe. -- To describe their grief would be impossible; but when they ascertained the cause of their child's death, they looked at Aubrey and pointed to the corpse. They were inconsolable; both died brokenhearted.
Aubrey being put to bed was seized with a most violent fever, and was often delirious; in these intervals he would call upon Lord Ruthven and upon Ianthe -- by some unaccountable combination he seemed to beg of his former companion to spare the being he loved. At other times he would imprecate maledictions upon his head, and curse him as her destroyer.
Lord Ruthven chanced at this time to arrive at Athens, and from whatever motive, upon hearing of the state of Aubrey, immediately placed himself in the same house, and became his constant attendant. When the latter recovered from his delirium, he was horrified and startled at the sight of him whose image he had now combined with that of a Vampyre; but Lord Ruthven, by his kind words, implying almost repentance for the fault that had caused their separation, and still more by the attention, anxiety, and care which he showed, soon reconciled him to his presence.
His lordship seemed quite changed; he no longer appeared that apathetic being who had so astonished Aubrey; but as soon as his convalescence began to be rapid, he again gradually retired into the same state of mind, and Aubrey perceived no difference from the former man, except that at times he was surprised to meet his gaze fixed intently upon him, with a smile of malicious exultation playing upon his lips: he knew not why, but this smile haunted him. During the last stage of the invalid's recovery, Lord Ruthven was apparently engaged in watching the tideless waves raised by the cooling breeze, or in marking the progress of those orbs, circling, like our world, the moveless sun; -- indeed, he appeared to wish to avoid the eyes of all.
Aubrey's mind, by this shock, was much weakened, and that elasticity of spirit which had once so distinguished him now seemed to have fled for ever. He was now as much a lover of solitude and silence as Lord Ruthven; but much as he wished for solitude, his mind could not find it in the neighbourhood of Athens; if he sought it amidst the ruins he had formerly frequented, Ianthe's form stood by his side; -- if he sought it in the woods, her light step would appear wandering amidst the underwood, in quest of the modest violet; then suddenly turning round, would show, to his wild imagination, her pale face and wounded throat, with a meek smile upon her lips. He determined to fly scenes, every feature of which created such bitter associations in his mind. He proposed to Lord Ruthven, to whom he held himself bound by the tender care he had taken of him during his illness, that they should visit those parts of Greece neither had yet seen.
They travelled in every direction, and sought every spot to which a recollection could be attached: but though they thus hastened from place to place, yet they seemed not to heed what they gazed upon. They heard much of robbers, but they gradually began to slight these reports, which they imagined were only the invention of individuals, whose interest it was to excite the generosity of those whom they defended from pretended dangers. In consequence of thus neglecting the advice of the inhabitants, on one occasion they travelled with only a few guards, more to serve as guides than as a defence. Upon entering, however, a narrow defile, at the bottom of which was the bed of a torrent, with large masses of rock brought down from the neighbouring precipices, they had reason to repent their negligence; for scarcely were the whole of the party engaged in the narrow pass, when they were startled by the whistling of bullets close to their heads, and by the echoed report of several guns. In an instant their guards had left them, and, placing themselves behind rocks, had begun to fire in the direction whence the report came. Lord Ruthven and Aubrey, imitating their example, retired for a moment behind the sheltering turn of the defile: but ashamed of being thus detained by a foe, who with insulting shouts bade them advance, and being exposed to unresisting slaughter, if any of the robbers should climb above and take them in the rear, they determined at once to rush forward in search of the enemy. Hardly had they lost the shelter of rock, when Lord Ruthven received a shot in the shoulder, which brought him to the ground. Aubrey hastened to his assistance; and, no longer heeding the contest or his own peril, was soon surprised by seeing the robbers' faces around him -- his guards having, upon Lord Ruthven's being wounded, immediately thrown up their arms and surrendered.
By promises of great reward, Aubrey soon induced them to convey his wounded friend to a neighbouring cabin; and having agreed upon a ransom, he was no more disturbed by their presence -- they being content merely to guard the entrance till their comrade should return with the promised sum, for which he had an order. Lord Ruthven's strength rapidly decreased; in two days mortification ensued, and death seemed advancing with hasty steps.
His conduct and appearance had not changed; he seemed as unconscious of pain as he had been of the objects about him: but towards the close of the last evening, his mind became apparently uneasy, and his eye often fixed upon Aubrey, who was induced to offer his assistance with more than usual earnestness -- "Assist me! you may save me -- you may do more than that -- I mean not life, I heed the death of my existence as little as that of the passing day; but you may save my honour, your friend's honour." -- "How? tell me how? I would do any thing," replied Aubrey. -- "I need but little, my life ebbs apace -- I cannot explain the whole -- but if you would conceal all you know of me, my honour were free from stain in the world's mouth -- and if my death were unknown for some time in England -- I -- I -- but life." -- "It shall not be known." -- "Swear!" cried the dying man raising himself with exultant violence. "Swear by all your soul reveres, by all your nature fears, swear that for a year and a day you will not impart your knowledge of my crimes or death to any living being in any way, whatever may happen, or whatever you may see." -- His eyes seemed bursting from their sockets; "I swear!" said Aubrey; he sunk laughing upon his pillow, and breathed no more.
Aubrey retired to rest, but did not sleep; the many circumstances attending his acquaintance with this man rose upon his mind, and he knew not why; when he remembered his oath a cold shivering came over him, as if from the presentiment of something horrible awaiting him. Rising early in the morning, he was about to enter the hovel in which he had left the corpse, when a robber met him, and informed him that it was no longer there, having been conveyed by himself and comrades, upon his retiring, to the pinnacle of a neighbouring mount, according to a promise they had given his lordship, that it should be exposed to the first cold ray of the moon that rose after his death. Aubrey astonished, and taking several of the men, determined to go and bury it upon the spot where it lay. But, when he had mounted to the summit he found no trace of either the corpse or the clothes, though the robbers swore they pointed out the identical rock on which they had laid the body. For a time his mind was bewildered in conjectures, but he at last returned, convinced that they had buried the corpse for the sake of the clothes.
Weary of a country in which he had met with such terrible misfortunes, and in which all apparently conspired to heighten that superstitious melancholy that had seized upon his mind, he resolved to leave it, and soon arrived at Smyrna. While waiting for a vessel to convey him to Otranto, or to Naples, he occupied himself in arranging those effects he had with him belonging to Lord Ruthven. Amongst other things there was a case containing several weapons of offence, more or less adapted to ensure the death of the victim. There were several daggers and ataghans. Whilst turning them over, and examining their curious forms, what was his surprise at finding a sheath apparently ornamented in the same style as the dagger discovered in the fatal hut; -- he shuddered; hastening to gain further proof, he found the weapon, and his horror may be imagined when he discovered that it fitted, though peculiarly shaped, the sheath he held in his hand. His eyes seemed to need no further certainty -- they seemed gazing to be bound to the dagger, yet still he wished to disbelieve; but the particular form, the same varying tints upon the haft and sheath were alike in splendour on both, and left no room for doubt; there were also drops of blood on each.
He left Smyrna, and on his way home, at Rome, his first inquiries were concerning the lady he had attempted to snatch from Lord Ruthven's seductive arts. Her parents were in distress, their fortune ruined, and she had not been heard of since the departure of his lordship. Aubrey's mind became almost broken under so many repeated horrors; he was afraid that this lady had fallen a victim to the destroyer of Ianthe. He became morose and silent; and his only occupation consisted in urging the speed of the postilions, as if he were going to save the life of some one he held dear. He arrived at Calais; a breeze, which seemed obedient to his will, soon wafted him to the English shores; and he hastened to the mansion of his fathers, and there, for a moment, appeared to lose, in the embraces and caresses of his sister, all memory of the past. If she before, by her infantine caresses, had gained his affection, now that the woman began to appear, she was still more attaching as a companion.
Miss Aubrey had not that winning grace which gains the gaze and applause of the drawing-room assemblies. There was none of that light brilliancy which only exists in the heated atmosphere of a crowded apartment. Her blue eye was never lit up by the levity of the mind beneath. There was a melancholy charm about it which did not seem to arise from misfortune, but from some feeling within, that appeared to indicate a soul conscious of a brighter realm. Her step was not that light footing, which strays where'er a butterfly or a colour may attract -- it was sedate and pensive. When alone, her face was never brightened by the smile of joy; but when her brother breathed to her his affection, and would in her presence forget those griefs she knew destroyed his rest, who would have exchanged her smile for that of the voluptuary? It seemed as if those eyes, that face were then playing in the light of their own native sphere.
She was yet only eighteen, and had not been presented to the world, it having been thought by her guardians more fit that her presentation should be delayed until her brother's return from the continent, when he might be her protector. It was now, therefore, resolved that the next drawing-room, which was fast approaching, should be the epoch of her entry into the "busy scene." Aubrey would rather have remained in the mansion of his fathers, and feed upon the melancholy which overpowered him. He could not feel interest about the frivolities of fashionable strangers, when his mind had been so torn by the events he had witnessed; but he determined to sacrifice his own comfort to the protection of his sister. They soon arrived in town, and prepared for the next day, which had been announced as a drawing- room.
The crowd was excessive -- a drawing-room had not been held for long time, and all who were anxious to bask in the smile of royalty, hastened thither. Aubrey was there with his sister. While he was standing in a corner by himself, heedless of all around him, engaged in the remembrance that the first time he had seen Lord Ruthven was in that very place -- he felt himself suddenly seized by the arm, and a voice he recognized too well, sounded in his ear -- "Remember your oath." He had hardly courage to turn, fearful of seeing a spectre that would blast him, when he perceived, at a little distance, the same figure which had attracted his notice on this spot upon his first entry into society. He gazed till his limbs almost refusing to bear their weight, he was obliged to take the arm of a friend, and forcing a passage through the crowd, he threw himself into his carriage, and was driven home. He paced the room with hurried steps, and fixed his hands upon his head, as if he were afraid his thoughts were bursting from his brain. Lord Ruthven again before him -- circumstances started up in dreadful array -- the dagger -- his oath. -- He roused himself, he could not believe it possible -- the dead rise again! -- He thought his imagination had conjured up the image his mind was resting upon.
It was impossible that it could be real -- he determined, therefore, to go again into society; for though he attempted to ask concerning Lord Ruthven, the name hung upon his lips and he could not succeed in gaining information. He went a few nights after with his sister to the assembly of a near relation. Leaving her under the protection of a matron, he retired into a recess, and there gave himself up to his own devouring thoughts. Perceiving, at last, that many were leaving, he roused himself, and entering another room, found his sister surrounded by several, apparently in earnest conversation; he attempted to pass and get near her, when one, whom he requested to move, turned round, and revealed to him those features he most abhorred. He sprang forward, seized his sister's arm, and, with hurried step, forced her towards the street: at the door he found himself impeded by the crowd of servants who were waiting for their lords; and while he was engaged in passing them, he again heard that voice whisper close to him -- "Remember your oath!" -- He did not dare to turn, but, hurrying his sister, soon reached home.
Aubrey became almost distracted. If before his mind had been absorbed by one subject, how much more completely was it engrossed now that the certainty of the monster's living again pressed upon his thoughts. His sister's attentions were now unheeded, and it was in vain that she intreated him to explain to her what had caused his abrupt conduct. He only uttered a few words, and those terrified her. The more he thought, the more he was bewildered. His oath startled him; -- was he then to allow this monster to roam, bearing ruin upon his breath, amidst all he held dear, and not avert its progress? His very sister might have been touched by him. But even if he were to break his oath, and disclose his suspicions, who would believe him? He thought of employing his own hand to free the world from such a wretch; but death, he remembered, had been already mocked. For days he remained in state; shut up in his room, he saw no one, and ate only when his sister came, who, with eyes streaming with tears, besought him, for her sake, to support nature.
At last, no longer capable of bearing stillness and solitude, he left his house, roamed from street to street, anxious to fly that image which haunted him. His dress became neglected, and he wandered, as often exposed to the noon-day sun as to the mid-night damps. He was no longer to be recognized; at first he returned with evening to the house; but at last he laid him down to rest wherever fatigue overtook him. His sister, anxious for his safety, employed people to follow him; but they were soon distanced by him who fled from a pursuer swifter than any -- from thought. His conduct, however, suddenly changed. Struck with the idea that he left by his absence the whole of his friends, with a fiend amongst them, of whose presence they were unconscious, he determined to enter again into society, and watch him closely, anxious to forewarn, in spite of his oath, all whom Lord Ruthven approached with intimacy. But when he entered into a room, his haggard and suspicious looks were so striking, his inward shuddering so visible, that his sister was at last obliged to beg of him to abstain from seeking, for her sake, a society which affected him so strongly. When, however, remonstrance proved unavailing, the guardians thought proper to interpose, and, fearing that his mind was becoming alienated, they thought it high time to resume again that trust which had been before imposed upon them by Aubrey's parents.
Desirous of saving him from the injuries and sufferings he had daily encountered in his wanderings, and of preventing him from exposing to the general eye those marks of what they considered folly, they engaged a physician to reside in the house, and take constant care of him. He hardly appeared to notice it, so completely was his mind absorbed by one terrible subject. His incoherence became at last so great that he was confined to his chamber. There he would often lie for days, incapable of being roused. He had become emaciated, his eyes had attained a glassy lustre; -- the only sign of affection and recollection remaining displayed itself upon the entry of his sister; then he would sometimes start, and, seizing her hands, with looks that severely afflicted her, he would desire her not to touch him. "Oh, do not touch him -- if your love for me is aught, do not go near him!" When, however, she inquired to whom he referred, his only answer was, "True! true!" and again he sank into a state, whence not even she could rouse him. This lasted many months: gradually, however, as the year was passing, his incoherences became less frequent, and his mind threw off a portion of its gloom, whilst his guardians observed, that several times in the day he would count upon his fingers a definite number, and then smile.
The time had nearly elapsed, when, upon the last day of the year, one of his guardians entering his room, began to converse with his physician upon the melancholy circumstance of Aubrey's being in so awful a situation, when his sister was going next day to be married. Instantly Aubrey's attention was attracted; he asked anxiously to whom. Glad of this mark of returning intellect, of which they feared he had been deprived, they mentioned the name of the Earl of Marsden. Thinking this was a young Earl whom he had met with in society, Aubrey seemed pleased, and astonished them still more by his expressing his intention to be present at the nuptials, and desiring to see his sister. They answered not, but in a few minutes his sister was with him.
He was apparently again capable of being affected by the influence of her lovely smile; for he pressed her to his breast, and kissed her cheek, wet with tears, flowing at the thought of her brother's being once more alive to the feelings of affection. He began to speak with all his wonted warmth, and to congratulate her upon her marriage with a person so distinguished for rank and every accomplishment; when he suddenly perceived a locket upon her breast; opening it, what was his surprise at beholding the features of the monster who had so long influenced his life. He seized the portrait in a paroxysm of rage, and trampled it under foot. Upon her asking him why he thus destroyed the resemblance of her future husband, he looked as if he did not understand her; -- then seizing her hands, and gazing on her with a frantic expression of countenance, he bade her swear that she would never wed this monster, for he -- But he could not advance -- it seemed as if that voice again bade him remember his oath -- he turned suddenly round, thinking Lord Ruthven was near him but saw no one.
In the meantime the guardians and physician, who had heard the whole, and thought this was but a return of his disorder, entered, and forcing him from Miss Aubrey, desired her to leave him. He fell upon his knees to them, he implored, he begged of them to delay but for one day. They, attributing this to the insanity they imagined had taken possession of his mind endeavoured to pacify him, and retired.
Lord Ruthven had called the morning after the drawing-room, and had been refused with every one else. When he heard of Aubrey's ill health, he readily understood himself to be the cause of it; but when he learned that he was deemed insane, his exultation and pleasure could hardly be concealed from those among whom he had gained this information. He hastened to the house of his former companion, and, by constant attendance, and the pretence of great affection for the brother and interest in his fate, he gradually won the ear of Miss Aubrey. Who could resist his power? His tongue had dangers and toils to recount -- could speak of himself as of an individual having no sympathy with any being on the crowded earth, save with her to whom he addressed himself; -- could tell how, since he knew her, his existence had begun to seem worthy of preservation, if it were merely that he might listen her soothing accents; -- in fine, he knew so well how to use the serpent's art, or such was the will of fate, that he gained her affections. The title of the elder branch falling at length to him, he obtained an important embassy, which served as an excuse for hastening the marriage (in spite of her brother's deranged state), which was to take place the very day before his departure for the continent.
Aubrey, when he was left by the physician and his guardians, attempted to bribe the servants, but in vain. He asked for pen and paper; it was given him; he wrote a letter to his sister, conjuring her, as she valued her own happiness, her own honour, and the honour of those now in the grave, who once held her in their arms as their hope and the hope of their house, to delay but for a few hours that marriage, on which he denounced the most heavy curses. The servants promised they would deliver it; but giving it to the physician, he thought it better not to harass any more the mind of Miss Aubrey by, what he considered, the ravings of a maniac. Night passed on without rest to the busy inmates of the house; and Aubrey heard, with a horror that may more easily be conceived than described, the notes of busy preparation. Morning came, and the sound of carriages broke upon his ear.
Aubrey grew almost frantic. The curiosity of the servants at last overcame their vigilance; they gradually stole away, leaving him in the custody of an helpless old woman. He seized the opportunity, with one bound was out of the room, and in a moment found himself in the apartment where all were nearly assembled. Lord Ruthven was the first to perceive him: he immediately approached, and, taking his arm by force, hurried him from the room, speechless with rage.
When on the staircase, Lord Ruthven whispered in his ear -- "Remember your oath, and know, if not my bride to day, your sister is dishonoured. Women are frail!" So saying, he pushed him towards his attendants, who, roused by the old woman, had come in search of him. Aubrey could no longer support himself; his rage not finding vent, had broken a blood-vessel, and he was conveyed to bed. This was not mentioned to his sister, who was not present when he entered, as the physician was afraid of agitating her. The marriage was solemnized, and the bride and bridegroom left London.
Aubrey's weakness increased; the effusion of blood produced symptoms of the near approach of death. He desired his sister's guardians might be called, and when the midnight hour had struck, he related composedly what the reader has perused -- he died immediately after.
The guardians hastened to protect Miss Aubrey; but when they arrived, it was too late.
Lord Ruthven had disappeared,
and Aubrey's sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!

I was there, brother...

2007-08-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

From Leading Comics #14

Death in the Sky

2007-08-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

From Leading Comics #14

Kellog's Pep advertisement with Superman!

2007-08-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #100

Escape from Planet X

2007-08-10T09:01:00.001-07:00

From Showcase #15

Shakespearean Sheldon

2007-08-10T09:00:00.001-07:00

Interview

2007-08-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

From http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2007/07/comic-con-inter.html

Comic-Con: Jameson Wants Johansson to Star in Biopic
[Posted by Erin Maxwell]Not many folks in the adult industry can claim A-list status. Despite the fact that the adult film market is a billion-dollar one, its only recently that H'wood moguls and the beautiful people have begun to acknowledge its presence. Most of this is due to the diligent efforts of Ms. Jenna Jameson.
Recently, the adult film star and New York Times best-selling author teamed with Virgin Comics for her latest endeavor, "Shadow Hunter," which follows the exploits of a risque superhero whose near death experience has her battling the forces of the evil on a daily basis. Making her first appearance at Comic-Con, Jameson talks about her upcoming foray into comics, as well as other mainstream projects in the pipeline:
So, this is your first Comic-Con. Are you excited to be here?I talked to my friends a lot about it. For the past five or six years, my friends have been signing here and they will call me and say, Jenna, you have to come down here. It's like a world unto itself. And I guess it's really hard to fathom until you experience it. So, I'm pretty excited. Just driving down here to the convention, it's totally different. There were Chewbeccas on the road.
This is a good place for it. On my way out yesterday, I had my car attacked by 30 zombies being chased by Shaun from "Shaun of the Dead."Oh my god, how cool. I think I'm going to love this convention because I'm a nerd at heart. I think a lot of the times people talk about these things and sometimes they just don't know, but I'm a fan of these things.
Are you a big fan of comics in general?I'm a huge fan of MacFarlane. I love the Spawn series. I'm very horror driven. When Virgin approached me, I was like please tell me I can (put) my ideas into effect. The "Spawn" series is something that I would want to model my whole career in the comic industry after.
Your new comic "Shadow Hunter" won't have any adult content, but it will still be for mature readers. Can you explain it a bit?It's about a girl who has a near death experience, and when she is revived, she comes back with super powers. Not overt super powers, but powers of a more sexual nature. Kind of what a girl can already do to a man, but to the tenth power.
Like Poison Ivy?Yeah. Just be able to mind meld people with her beauty and sexual power. The storyline is still evolving. I want to make sure there is as much of me in this as possible.
What have you contributed to it so far?.It's all fairly new. It all came about in the last month. I told all the guys at Virgin that I would wake up in the middle of the night and write down all my notes on my Sidekick. I want to be able to work with the writers. I never want to just put my stamp on anything and just walk away. I want to put my heart and soul into something. But that's who I am. I think that's why I've been so successful in my career. Because everything that I do, I embrace 100%. I never sign on to anything without knowing I can devote all of my time to it.
Are you hoping "Shadow Hunter" will make it to feature film? I really would love for it to get to the point where it would be adapted into a feature film. It would be something I would be excited to actually star in. Right now, I'm working on pre-negotiations with Universal on my movie based on my book ("How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale"), but I'm not going to star in it, and that's by my own accord. I don't want to. I don't want to relive my life.
Who do you have an eye for?Scarlett Johansson. She has a depth to her, and sexiness. I think she could capture the ins and outs, the hard times and the good times of my life. She's my first choice. There are people vying for the role that you would not believe. I mean, people you would never think of as an actress. A lot of pop stars. Maybe it would work. Maybe it will be great. But the bottom line is that I want it to be edgy, dark and real. We are talking to Peter Berg about directing it.
For this comic moving onto the feature film avenue, I would love to star in something sci-fi where I can be physical. I don't want to play myself. This would be fun. I can bring sensitivity to the character that I don't think has really been tapped into with any of the other characters that have come out. Women know I'm not just a sexual icon. I'm a feminist also. There are so many different facets to me that I would want to make sure are played out in this story.
Virgin Comics' "Shadow Hunter" will be in stores in December.

Secrets of the Secret Service

2007-08-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

From Showcase #5

Haunted House

2007-08-08T14:01:00.001-07:00

From Out of the Night #9

Death Strikes Twice

2007-08-08T13:59:00.002-07:00

From Leading Comics #12

Black Dance Bayou

2007-08-08T13:59:00.001-07:00

From Out of the Night #8

The Pay-Off

2007-08-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

From Leading Comics #11

Ten Seconds

2007-08-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

From Leading Comics #13

The Camera Sees Death

2007-08-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

From America's Greatest Comics #2

Repair Job

2007-08-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #99.

Laugh Parade

2007-08-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #248

Photo Ace of Outer Space

2007-08-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

From Showcase #16

Arch-Spy of the Revolution

2007-08-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

From Cloak and Dagger #1, 1952.

Frontier Posse

2007-08-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #98

Death Doesn't Whisper

2007-08-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

From America's Greatest Comics #1

Souvenir for the Enemy

2007-08-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #90

A Warrior Returns

2007-08-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #89

Sauce for the Goose

2007-08-04T20:23:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #101

The Big Dance

2007-08-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

From Showcase #4

Not Too Smart

2007-08-04T18:04:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #96.

Lights Out

2007-08-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #100.

Soda Boy

2007-08-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #95.

The Painted Grave AND The Horrible Toys

2007-07-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

From Adventures into the Unknown #1, TWO stories:

Medal for a Hero

2007-07-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #94.

Snap Judgment

2007-07-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #93.

Strong Medicine

2007-07-31T10:11:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #92.

Death Around the Bend

2007-07-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

From Blue Ribbon Comics

The Cuckoo

2007-07-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #88.

The Revolution Comes to Jamie Cuthbert

2007-07-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

From Big Shot #103, 1949.

The Curse of Ahmen Ra

2007-07-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

From Slave Girl Comics #1, 1949.

Cats have Nine Lives

2007-07-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

From Out of the Night #7, 1953.

True Colors story

2007-07-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Voice in the Night

2007-07-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

From Adventure Comics #87

The Chill of the Grave

2007-07-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

From Out of the Night #6, 1953

Demon's Grotto

2007-07-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

From Out of the Night #5, 1952

The Messenger

2007-04-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

The Messenger

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

Little gray messenger,
Robed like painted Death,
Your robe is dust.
Whom do you seek
Among lilies and closed buds
At dusk?

Among lilies and closed buds
At dusk,
Whom do you seek,
Little gray messenger,
Robed in the awful panoply
Of painted Death?
R.W.C.

From _The Mystery of Choice_, by Robert W. Chambers. Published,
1897, by D. Appleton and Company. Copyright by Robert W. Chambers.
By permission of Robert W. Chambers.

All-wise,
Hast thou seen all there is to see with thy two eyes?
Dost thou know all there is to know, and so,
Omniscient,
Darest thou still to say thy brother lies?
R.W.C.

I

"The bullet entered here," said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle
finger over a smooth hole exactly in the center of the forehead.

I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece.

The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first
with his middle finger, and then with his thumb.

"Let me see the skull again," said I.

Max Fortin picked it up from the sod.

"It's like all the others," he repeated, wiping his glasses on his
handkerchief. "I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so I
brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannalec are digging
yet. They ought to stop."

"How many skulls are there altogether?" I inquired.

"They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the
list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan's
wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them."

"Let's go over," said I; and I picked up my gun and started across the
cliffs, Portin on one side, Môme on the other.

"Who has the list?" I asked, lighting my pipe. "You say there is a
list?"

"The list was found rolled up in a brass cylinder," said the chemist. He
added: "You should not smoke here. You know that if a single spark
drifted into the wheat--"

"Ah, but I have a cover to my pipe," said I, smiling.

Fortin watched me as I closed the pepper-box arrangement over the
glowing bowl of the pipe. Then he continued:

"The list was made out on thick yellow paper; the brass tube has
preserved it. It is as fresh to-day as it was in 1760. You shall see
it."

"Is that the date?"

"The list is dated 'April, 1760.' The Brigadier Durand has it. It is not
written in French."

"Not written in French!" I exclaimed.

"No," replied Fortin solemnly, "it is written in Breton."

"But," I protested, "the Breton language was never written or printed in
1760."

"Except by priests," said the chemist.

"I have heard of but one priest who ever wrote the Breton language," I
began.

Fortin stole a glance at my face.

"You mean--the Black Priest?" he asked.

I nodded.

Fortin opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and finally shut his
teeth obstinately over the wheat stem that he was chewing.

"And the Black Priest?" I suggested encouragingly. But I knew it was
useless; for it is easier to move the stars from their courses than to
make an obstinate Breton talk. We walked on for a minute or two in
silence.

"Where is the Brigadier Durand?" I asked, motioning Môme to come out of
the wheat, which he was trampling as though it were heather. As I spoke
we came in sight of the farther edge of the wheat field and the dark,
wet mass of cliffs beyond.

"Durand is down there--you can see him; he stands just behind the mayor
of St. Gildas."

"I see," said I; and we struck straight down, following a sun-baked
cattle path across the heather.

When we reached the edge of the wheat field, Le Bihan, the mayor of St.
Gildas, called to me, and I tucked my gun under my arm and skirted the
wheat to where he stood.

"Thirty-eight skulls," he said in his thin, high-pitched voice; "there
is but one more, and I am opposed to further search. I suppose Fortin
told you?"

I shook hands with him, and returned the salute of the Brigadier Durand.

"I am opposed to further search," repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking
at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and
broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armor.

Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous mustache, and hooked
his thumbs in his saber belt.

"As for me," he said, "I am in favor of further search."

"Further search for what--for the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked.

Le Bihan nodded. Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl
of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon. I followed his eyes. On
the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea,
sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward
heaven.

"Where is that list, Durand?" I asked.

The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass
cylinder about a foot long. Very gravely he unscrewed the head and
dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing
on both sides. At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll. But I
could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.

"Come, come, Le Bihan," I said impatiently, "translate it, won't you?
You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems."

Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannalec men were
digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.

As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannalec men were removing a square
piece of sailcloth from what appeared to be a pile of cobblestones.

"Look!" said Le Bihan shrilly. I looked. The pile below was a heap of
skulls. After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and
walked over to the men of Bannalec. They saluted me gravely, leaning on
their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned
hands.

"How many?" said I in Breton.

"Thirty-eight," they replied.

I glanced around. Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human
bones. Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and
steel. Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty
bayonets, saber blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished
buckle attached to a bit of leather hard as iron.

I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate. The buttons bore the
royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English
arms and also with the number "27."

"I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment, the
27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there," said one of the
Bannalec men.

"Oh!" said I; "then these are the bones of English soldiers?"

"Yes," said the men of Bannalec.

Le Bihan was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed
the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the
excavation.

"Well," said I, trying to prevent Môme from leaping up and licking my
face as I emerged from the pit, "I suppose you know what these bones
are. What are you going to do with them?"

"There was a man," said Le Bihan angrily, "an Englishman, who passed
here in a dog-cart on his way to Quimper about an hour ago, and what do
you suppose he wished to do?"

"Buy the relics?" I asked, smiling.

"Exactly--the pig!" piped the mayor of St. Gildas. "Jean Marie Tregunc,
who found the bones, was standing there where Max Fortin stands, and do
you know what he answered? He spat upon the ground, and said: 'Pig of an
Englishman, do you take me for a desecrator of graves?'"

I knew Tregunc, a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year's end
to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat for a
meal.

"How much did the Englishman offer Tregunc?" I asked.

"Two hundred francs for the skulls alone."

I thought of the relic hunters and the relic buyers on the battlefields
of our civil war.

"Seventeen hundred and sixty is long ago," I said.

"Respect for the dead can never die," said Fortin.

"And the English soldiers came here to kill your fathers and burn your
homes," I continued.

"They were murderers and thieves, but--they are dead," said Tregunc,
coming up from the beach below, his long sea rake balanced on his
dripping jersey.

"How much do you earn every year, Jean Marie?" I asked, turning to shake
hands with him.

"Two hundred and twenty francs, monsieur."

"Forty-five dollars a year," I said. "Bah! you are worth more, Jean.
Will you take care of my garden for me? My wife wished me to ask you. I
think it would be worth one hundred francs a month to you and to me.
Come on, Le Bihan--come along, Fortin--and you, Durand. I want somebody
to translate that list into French for me."

Tregunc stood gazing at me, his blue eyes dilated.

"You may begin at once," I said, smiling, "if the salary suits you?"

"It suits," said Tregunc, fumbling for his pipe in a silly way that
annoyed Le Bihan.

"Then go and begin your work," cried the mayor impatiently; and Tregunc
started across the moors toward St. Gildas, taking off his
velvet-ribboned cap to me and gripping his sea rake very hard.

"You offer him more than my salary," said the mayor, after a moment's
contemplation of his silver buttons.

"Pooh!" said I, "what do you do for your salary except play dominoes
with Max Portin at the Groix Inn?"

Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his saber and winked at Max
Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate,
laughing.

"There's a shady spot under the cliff," I said; "come on, Le Bihan, and
read me what is in the scroll."

In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself
upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.

The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his mustache into
needlelike points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his
glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan,
the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and
tucking it under his arm.

"First of all," he began in a shrill voice, "I am going to light my
pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the
attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him."

He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square
stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then
he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a
long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To
fill such a pipe requires ten minutes' close attention. To smoke it to a
finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It is
the crystallization of everything Breton.

"Go on," said I, lighting a cigarette.

"The fort," said the mayor, "was built by Louis XIV, and was dismantled
twice by the English. Louis XV restored it in 1730. In 1760 it was
carried by assault by the English. They came across from the island of
Groix--three shiploads, and they stormed the fort and sacked St. Julien
yonder, and they started to burn St. Gildas--you can see the marks of
their bullets on my house yet; but the men of Bannalec and the men of
Lorient fell upon them with pike and scythe and blunderbuss, and those
who did not run away lie there below in the gravel pit now--thirty-eight
of them."

"And the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked, finishing my cigarette.

The mayor had succeeded in filling his pipe, and now he began to put his
tobacco pouch away.

"The thirty-ninth skull," he mumbled, holding the pipe stem between his
defective teeth--"the thirty-ninth skull is no business of mine. I have
told the Bannalec men to cease digging."

"But what is--whose is the missing skull?" I persisted curiously.

The mayor was busy trying to strike a spark to his tinder. Presently he
set it aglow, applied it to his pipe, took the prescribed four puffs,
knocked the ashes out of the bowl, and gravely replaced the pipe in his
pocket.

"The missing skull?" he asked.

"Yes," said I, impatiently.

The mayor slowly unrolled the scroll and began to read, translating from
the Breton into French. And this is what he read:

"ON THE CLIFFS OF ST. GILDAS,
APRIL 13, 1760.

"On this day, by order of the Count of Soisic, general in chief of the
Breton forces now lying in Kerselec Forest, the bodies of thirty-eight
English soldiers of the 27th, 50th, and 72d regiments of Foot were
buried in this spot, together with their arms and equipments."

The mayor paused and glanced at me reflectively.

"Go on, Le Bihan," I said.

"With them," continued the mayor, turning the scroll and reading on the
other side, "was buried the body of that vile traitor who betrayed the
fort to the English. The manner of his death was as follows: By order of
the most noble Count of Soisic, the traitor was first branded upon the
forehead with the brand of an arrowhead. The iron burned through the
flesh and was pressed heavily so that the brand should even burn into
the bone of the skull. The traitor was then led out and bidden to
kneel. He admitted having guided the English from the island of Groix.
Although a priest and a Frenchman, he had violated his priestly office
to aid him in discovering the password to the fort. This password he
extorted during confession from a young Breton girl who was in the habit
of rowing across from the island of Groix to visit her husband in the
fort. When the fort fell, this young girl, crazed by the death of her
husband, sought the Count of Soisic and told how the priest had forced
her to confess to him all she knew about the fort. The priest was
arrested at St. Gildas as he was about to cross the river to Lorient.
When arrested he cursed the girl, Marie Trevec----"

"What!" I exclaimed, "Marie Trevec!"

"Marie Trevec," repeated Le Bihan; "the priest cursed Marie Trevec, and
all her family and descendants. He was shot as he knelt, having a mask
of leather over his face, because the Bretons who composed the squad of
execution refused to fire at a priest unless his face was concealed. The
priest was l'Abbé Sorgue, commonly known as the Black Priest on account
of his dark face and swarthy eyebrows. He was buried with a stake
through his heart."

Le Bihan paused, hesitated, looked at me, and handed the manuscript back
to Durand. The gendarme took it and slipped it into the brass cylinder.

"So," said I, "the thirty-ninth skull is the skull of the Black
Priest."

"Yes," said Fortin. "I hope they won't find it."

"I have forbidden them to proceed," said the mayor querulously. "You
heard me, Max Fortin."

I rose and picked up my gun. Môme came and pushed his head into my hand.

"That's a fine dog," observed Durand, also rising.

"Why don't you wish to find his skull?" I asked Le Bihan. "It would be
curious to see whether the arrow brand really burned into the bone."

"There is something in that scroll that I didn't read to you," said the
mayor grimly. "Do you wish to know what it is?"

"Of course," I replied in surprise.

"Give me the scroll again, Durand," he said; then he read from the
bottom: "I, l'Abbé Sorgue, forced to write the above by my executioners,
have written it in my own blood; and with it I leave my curse. My curse
on St. Gildas, on Marie Trevec, and on her descendants. I will come back
to St. Gildas when my remains are disturbed. Woe to that Englishman whom
my branded skull shall touch!"

"What rot!" I said. "Do you believe it was really written in his own
blood?"

"I am going to test it," said Fortin, "at the request of Monsieur le
Maire. I am not anxious for the job, however."

"See," said Le Bihan, holding out the scroll to me, "it is signed,
'L'Abbé Sorgue.'"

I glanced curiously over the paper.

"It must be the Black Priest," I said. "He was the only man who wrote in
the Breton language. This is a wonderfully interesting discovery, for
now, at last, the mystery of the Black Priest's disappearance is cleared
up. You will, of course, send this scroll to Paris, Le Bihan?"

"No," said the mayor obstinately, "it shall be buried in the pit below
where the rest of the Black Priest lies."

I looked at him and recognized that argument would be useless. But still
I said, "It will be a loss to history, Monsieur Le Bihan."

"All the worse for history, then," said the enlightened Mayor of St.
Gildas.

We had sauntered back to the gravel pit while speaking. The men of
Bannalec were carrying the bones of the English soldiers toward the St.
Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of
white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the somber
robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard.

"They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now," muttered Max
Fortin.

"Respect the dead," repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the
Bannalec men.

"It was written in that scroll that Marie Trevec, of Groix Island, was
cursed by the priest--she and her descendants," I said, touching Le
Bihan on the arm. "There was a Marie Trevec who married an Yves Trevec
of St. Gildas----"

"It is the same," said Le Bihan, looking at me obliquely.

"Oh!" said I; "then they were ancestors of my wife."

"Do you fear the curse?" asked Le Bihan.

"What?" I laughed.

"There was the case of the Purple Emperor," said Max Fortin timidly.

Startled for a moment, I faced him, then shrugged my shoulders and
kicked at a smooth bit of rock which lay near the edge of the pit,
almost embedded in gravel.

"Do you suppose the Purple-Emperor drank himself crazy because he was
descended from Marie Trevec?" I asked contemptuously.

"Of course not," said Max Fortin hastily.

"Of course not," piped the mayor. "I only--Hellow! what's that you're
kicking?"

"What?" said I, glancing down, at the same time involuntarily giving
another kick. The smooth bit of rock dislodged itself and rolled out of
the loosened gravel at my feet.

"The thirty-ninth skull!" I exclaimed. "By jingo, it's the noddle of the
Black Priest! See! there is the arrowhead branded on the front!"

The mayor stepped back. Max Fortin also retreated. There was a pause,
during which I looked at them, and they looked anywhere but at me.

"I don't like it," said the mayor at last, in a husky, high voice. "I
don't like it! The scroll says he will come back to St. Gildas when his
remains are disturbed. I--I don't like it, Monsieur Darrel--"

"Bosh!" said I; "the poor wicked devil is where he can't get out. For
Heaven's sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year
of grace 1896?"

The mayor gave me a look.

"And he says 'Englishman.' You are an Englishman, Monsieur Darrel," he
announced.

"You know better. You know I'm an American."

"It's all the same," said the Mayor of St. Gildas, obstinately.

"No, it isn't!" I answered, much exasperated, and deliberately pushed
the skull till it rolled into the bottom of the gravel pit below.

"Cover it up," said I; "bury the scroll with it too, if you insist, but
I think you ought to send it to Paris. Don't look so gloomy, Fortin,
unless you believe in werewolves and ghosts. Hey! what the--what the
devil's the matter with you, anyway? What are you staring at, Le Bihan?"

"Come, come," muttered the mayor in a low, tremulous voice, "it's time
we got out of this. Did you see? Did you see, Fortin?"

"I saw," whispered Max Fortin, pallid with fright.

The two men were almost running across the sunny pasture now, and I
hastened after them, demanding to know what was the matter.

"Matter!" chattered the mayor, gasping with exasperation and terror.
"The skull is rolling up hill again," and he burst into a terrified
gallop, Max Fortin followed close behind.

I watched them stampeding across the pasture, then turned toward the
gravel pit, mystified, incredulous. The skull was lying on the edge of
the pit, exactly where it had been before I pushed it over the edge. For
a second I stared at it; a singular chilly feeling crept up my spinal
column, and I turned and walked away, sweat starting from the root of
every hair on my head. Before I had gone twenty paces the absurdity of
the whole thing struck me. I halted, hot with shame and annoyance, and
retraced my steps.

There lay the skull.

"I rolled a stone down instead of the skull," I muttered to myself. Then
with the butt of my gun I pushed the skull over the edge of the pit and
watched it roll to the bottom; and as it struck the bottom of the pit,
Môme, my dog, suddenly whipped his tail between his legs, whimpered, and
made off across the moor.

"Môme!" I shouted, angry and astonished; but the dog only fled the
faster, and I ceased calling from sheer surprise.

"What the mischief is the matter with that dog!" I thought. He had never
before played me such a trick.

Mechanically I glanced into the pit, but I could not see the skull. I
looked down. The skull lay at my feet again, touching them.

"Good heavens!" I stammered, and struck at it blindly with my gunstock.
The ghastly thing flew into the air, whirling over and over, and rolled
again down the sides of the pit to the bottom. Breathlessly I stared at
it, then, confused and scarcely comprehending, I stepped back from the
pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting
from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the
bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the
pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As
I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one
hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod
about the excavation. There was something white and bare and round on
the turf at the edge of the pit. It might have been a stone; there were
plenty of them lying about.

II

When I entered my garden I saw Môme sprawling on the stone doorstep. He
eyed me sideways and flopped his tail.

"Are you not mortified, you idiot dog?" I said, looking about the upper
windows for Lys.

Môme rolled over on his back and raised one deprecating forepaw, as
though to ward off calamity.

"Don't act as though I was in the habit of beating you to death," I
said, disgusted. I had never in my life raised whip to the brute. "But
you are a fool dog," I continued. "No, you needn't come to be babied and
wept over; Lys can do that, if she insists, but I am ashamed of you, and
you can go to the devil."

Môme slunk off into the house, and I followed, mounting directly to my
wife's boudoir. It was empty.

"Where has she gone?" I said, looking hard at Môme, who had followed me.
"Oh! I see you don't know. Don't pretend you do. Come off that lounge!
Do you think Lys wants tan-colored hairs all over her lounge?"

I rang the bell for Catherine and Fine, but they didn't know where
"madame" had gone; so I went into my room, bathed, exchanged my somewhat
grimy shooting clothes for a suit of warm, soft knickerbockers, and,
after lingering some extra moments over my toilet--for I was particular,
now that I had married Lys--I went down to the garden and took a chair
out under the fig-trees.

"Where can she be?" I wondered, Môme came sneaking out to be comforted,
and I forgave him for Lys's sake, whereupon he frisked.

"You bounding cur," said I, "now what on earth started you off across
the moor? If you do it again I'll push you along with a charge of dust
shot."

As yet I had scarcely dared think about the ghastly hallucination of
which I had been a victim, but now I faced it squarely, flushing a
little with mortification at the thought of my hasty retreat from the
gravel pit.

"To think," I said aloud, "that those old woman's tales of Max Fortin
and Le Bihan should have actually made me see what didn't exist at all!
I lost my nerve like a schoolboy in a dark bedroom." For I knew now that
I had mistaken a round stone for a skull each time, and had pushed a
couple of big pebbles into the pit instead of the skull itself.

"By jingo!" said I, "I'm nervous; my liver must be in a devil of a
condition if I see such things when I'm awake! Lys will know what to
give me."

I felt mortified and irritated and sulky, and thought disgustedly of Le
Bihan and Max Fortin.

But after a while I ceased speculating, dismissed the mayor, the
chemist, and the skull from my mind, and smoked pensively, watching the
sun low dipping in the western ocean. As the twilight fell for a moment
over ocean and moorland, a wistful, restless happiness filled my heart,
the happiness that all men know--all men who have loved.

Slowly the purple mist crept out over the sea; the cliffs darkened; the
forest was shrouded.

Suddenly the sky above burned with the afterglow, and the world was
alight again.

Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with it;
moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the
gentle flush. I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar,
their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the
surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm
reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out
in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tidewater.

The interminable monotone of the ocean intensified the silence. I sat
motionless, holding my breath as one who listens to the first low rumor
of an organ. All at once the pure whistle of a nightingale cut the
silence, and the first moonbeam silvered the wastes of mist-hung waters.

I raised my head.

Lys stood before me in the garden.

When we had kissed each other, we linked arms and moved up and down the
gravel walks, watching the moonbeams sparkle on the sand bar as the tide
ebbed and ebbed. The broad beds of white pinks about us were atremble
with hovering white moths; the October roses hung all abloom, perfuming
the salt wind.

"Sweetheart," I said, "where is Yvonne? Has she promised to spend
Christmas with us?"

"Yes, Dick; she drove me down from Plougat this afternoon. She sent her
love to you. I am not jealous. What did you shoot?"

"A hare and four partridges. They are in the gun room. I told Catherine
not to touch them until you had seen them."

Now I suppose I knew that Lys could not be particularly enthusiastic
over game or guns; but she pretended she was, and always scornfully
denied that it was for my sake and not for the pure love of sport. So
she dragged me off to inspect the rather meager game bag, and she paid
me pretty compliments, and gave a little cry of delight and pity as I
lifted the enormous hare out of the sack by his ears.

"He'll eat no more of our lettuce," I said attempting to justify the
assassination.

"Unhappy little bunny--and what a beauty! O Dick, you are a splendid
shot, are you not?"

I evaded the question and hauled out a partridge.

"Poor little dead things'" said Lys in a whisper; "it seems a
pity--doesn't it, Dick? But then you are so clever----"

"We'll have them broiled," I said guardedly, "tell Catherine."

Catherine came in to take away the game, and presently 'Fine Lelocard,
Lys's maid, announced dinner, and Lys tripped away to her boudoir.

I stood an instant contemplating her blissfully, thinking, "My boy,
you're the happiest fellow in the world--you're in love with your wife'"

I walked into the dining-room, beamed at the plates, walked out again;
met Tregunc in the hallway, beamed on him; glanced into the kitchen,
beamed at Catherine, and went up stairs, still beaming.

Before I could knock at Lys's door it opened, and Lys came hastily out.
When she saw me she gave a little cry of relief, and nestled close to my
breast.

"There is something peering in at my window," she said.

"What!" I cried angrily.

"A man, I think, disguised as a priest, and he has a mask on. He must
have climbed up by the bay tree."

I was down the stairs and out of doors in no time. The moonlit garden
was absolutely deserted. Tregunc came up, and together we searched the
hedge and shrubbery around the house and out to the road.

"Jean Marie," said I at length, "loose my bulldog--he knows you--and
take your supper on the porch where you can watch. My wife says the
fellow is disguised as a priest, and wears a mask."

Tregunc showed his white teeth in a smile. "He will not care to venture
in here again, I think, Monsieur Darrel."

I went back and found Lys seated quietly at the table.

"The soup is ready, dear," she said. "Don't worry; it was only some
foolish lout from Bannalec. No one in St. Gildas or St. Julien would do
such a thing."

I was too much exasperated to reply at first, but Lys treated it as a
stupid joke, and after a while I began to look at it in that light.

Lys told me about Yvonne, and reminded me of my promise to have Herbert
Stuart down to meet her.

"You wicked diplomat!" I protested. "Herbert is in Paris, and hard at
work for the Salon."

"Don't you think he might spare a week to flirt with the prettiest girl
in Finistere?" inquired Lys innocently.

"Prettiest girl! Not much!" I said.

"Who is, then?" urged Lys.

I laughed a trifle sheepishly.

"I suppose you mean me, Dick," said Lys, coloring up.

"Now I bore you, don't I?"

"Bore me? Ah, no, Dick."

After coffee and cigarettes were served I spoke about Tregunc, and Lys
approved.

"Poor Jean! He will be glad, won't he? What a dear fellow you are!"

"Nonsense," said I; "we need a gardener; you said so yourself, Lys."

But Lys leaned over and kissed me, and then bent down and hugged
Môme--who whistled through his nose in sentimental appreciation.

"I am a very happy woman," said Lys.

"Môme was a very bad dog to-day," I observed.

"Poor Môme!" said Lys, smiling.

When dinner was over and Môme lay snoring before the blaze--for the
October nights are often chilly in Finistere--Lys curled up in the
chimney corner with her embroidery, and gave me a swift glance from
under her dropping lashes.

"You look like a schoolgirl, Lys," I said teasingly. "I don't believe
you are sixteen yet."

She pushed back her heavy burnished hair thoughtfully. Her wrist was as
white as surf foam.

"Have we been married four years? I don't believe it," I said.

She gave me another swift glance and touched the embroidery on her knee,
smiling faintly.

"I see," said I, also smiling at the embroidered garment. "Do you think
it will fit?"

"Fit?" repeated Lys. Then she laughed

"And," I persisted, "are you perfectly sure that you--er--we shall need
it?"

"Perfectly," said Lys. A delicate color touched her cheeks and neck. She
held up the little garment, all fluffy with misty lace and wrought with
quaint embroidery.

"It is very gorgeous," said I; "don't use your eyes too much, dearest.
May I smoke a pipe?"

"Of course," she said selecting a skein of pale blue silk.

For a while I sat and smoked in silence, watching her slender fingers
among the tinted silks and thread of gold.

Presently she spoke: "What did you say your crest is, Dick?"

"My crest? Oh, something or other rampant on a something or other----"

"Dick!"

"Dearest?"

"Don't be flippant."

"But I really forget. It's an ordinary crest; everybody in New York has
them. No family should be without 'em."

"You are disagreeable, Dick. Send Josephine upstairs for my album."

"Are you going to put that crest on the--the--whatever it is?"

"I am; and my own crest, too."

I thought of the Purple Emperor and wondered a little.

"You didn't know I had one, did you?" she smiled.

"What is it?" I replied evasively.

"You shall see. Ring for Josephine."

I rang, and, when 'Fine appeared, Lys gave her some orders in a low
voice, and Josephine trotted away, bobbing her white-coiffed head with a
"Bien, Madame!"

After a few minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume, from
which the gold and blue had mostly disappeared.

I took the book in my hands and examined the ancient emblazoned covers.

"Lilies!" I exclaimed.

"Fleur-de-lis," said my wife demurely.

"Oh!" said I, astonished, and opened the book.

"You have never before seen this book?" asked Lys, with a touch of
malice in her eyes.

"You know I haven't. Hello! What's this? Oho! So there should be a de
before Trevec? Lys de Trevec? Then why in the world did the Purple
Emperor----"

"Dick!" cried Lys.

"All right," said I. "Shall I read about the Sieur de Trevec who rode to
Saladin's tent alone to seek for medicine for St. Louise? Or shall I
read about--what is it? Oh, here it is, all down in black and
white--about the Marquis de Trevec who drowned himself before Alva's
eyes rather than surrender the banner of the fleur-de-lis to Spain? It's
all written here. But, dear, how about that soldier named Trevec who was
killed in the old fort on the cliff yonder?"

"He dropped the de, and the Trevecs since then have been Republicans,"
said Lys--"all except me."

"That's quite right," said I; "it is time that we Republicans should
agree upon some feudal system. My dear, I drink to the king!" and I
raised my wine glass and looked at Lys.

"To the king," said Lys, flushing. She smoothed out the tiny garment on
her knees; she touched the glass with her lips; her eyes were very
sweet. I drained the glass to the king.

After a silence I said: "I will tell the king stories. His majesty shall
be amused."

"His majesty," repeated Lys softly.

"Or hers," I laughed. "Who knows?"

"Who knows?" murmured Lys; with a gentle sigh.

"I know some stories about Jack the Giant-Killer," I announced. "Do
you, Lys?"

"I? No, not about a giant-killer, but I know all about the werewolf, and
Jeanne-la-Flamme, and the Man in Purple Tatters, and--O dear me, I know
lots more."

"You are very wise," said I. "I shall teach his majesty, English."

"And I Breton," cried Lys jealously.

"I shall bring playthings to the king," said I--"big green lizards from
the gorse, little gray mullets to swim in glass globes, baby rabbits
from the forest of Kerselec----"

"And I," said Lys, "will bring the first primrose, the first branch of
aubepine, the first jonquil, to the king--my king."

"Our king," said I; and there was peace in Finistere.

I lay back, idly turning the leaves of the curious old volume.

"I am looking," said I, "for the crest."

"The crest, dear? It is a priest's head with an arrow-shaped mark on the
forehead, on a field----"

I sat up and stared at my wife.

"Dick, whatever is the matter?" she smiled. "The story is there in that
book. Do you care to read it? No? Shall I tell it to you? Well, then: It
happened in the third crusade. There was a monk whom men called the
Black Priest. He turned apostate, and sold himself to the enemies of
Christ. A Sieur de Trevec burst into the Saracen camp, at the head of
only one hundred lances, and carried the Black Priest away out of the
very midst of their army."

"So that is how you come by the crest," I said quietly; but I thought of
the branded skull in the gravel pit, and wondered.

"Yes," said Lys. "The Sieur de Trevec cut the Black Priest's head off,
but first he branded him with an arrow mark on the forehead. The book
says it was a pious action, and the Sieur de Trevec got great merit by
it. But I think it was cruel, the branding," she sighed.

"Did you ever hear of any other Black Priest?"

"Yes. There was one in the last century, here in St. Gildas. He cast a
white shadow in the sun. He wrote in the Breton language. Chronicles,
too, I believe. I never saw them. His name was the same as that of the
old chronicler, and of the other priest, Jacques Sorgue. Some said he
was a lineal descendant of the traitor. Of course the first Black Priest
was bad enough for anything. But if he did have a child, it need not
have been the ancestor of the last Jacques Sorgue. They say he was so
good he was not allowed to die, but was caught up to heaven one day,"
added Lys, with believing eyes.

I smiled.

"But he disappeared," persisted Lys.

"I'm afraid his journey was in another direction," I said jestingly, and
thoughtlessly told her the story of the morning. I had utterly
forgotten the masked man at her window, but before I finished I
remembered him fast enough, and realized what I had done as I saw her
face whiten.

"Lys," I urged tenderly, "that was only some clumsy clown's trick. You
said so yourself. You are not superstitious, my dear?"

Her eyes were on mine. She slowly drew the little gold cross from her
bosom and kissed it. But her lips trembled as they pressed the symbol of
faith.

III

About nine o'clock the next morning I walked into the Groix Inn and sat
down at the long discolored oaken table, nodding good-day to Marianne
Bruyere, who in turn bobbed her white coiffe at me.

"My clever Bannalec maid," said I, "what is good for a stirrup-cup at
the Groix Inn?"

"Schist?" she inquired in Breton.

"With a dash of red wine, then," I replied.

She brought the delicious Quimperle cider, and I poured a little
Bordeaux into it. Marianne watched me with laughing black eyes.

"What makes your cheeks so red, Marianne?" I asked. "Has Jean Marie been
here?"

"We are to be married, Monsieur Darrel," she laughed.

"Ah! Since when has Jean Marie Tregunc lost his head?"

"His head? Oh, Monsieur Darrel--his heart, you mean!"

"So I do," said I. "Jean Marie is a practical fellow."

"It is all due to your kindness--" began the girl, but I raised my hand
and held up the glass.

"It's due to himself. To your happiness, Marianne"; and I took a hearty
draught of the schist. "Now," said I, "tell me where I can find Le Bihan
and Max Fortin."

"Monsieur Le Bihan and Monsieur Fortin are above in the broad room. I
believe they are examining the Red Admiral's effects."

"To send them to Paris? Oh, I know. May I go up, Marianne?"

"And God go with you," smiled the girl.

When I knocked at the door of the broad room above little Max Fortin
opened it. Dust covered his spectacles and nose; his hat, with the tiny
velvet ribbons fluttering, was all awry.

"Come in, Monsieur Darrel," he said; "the mayor and I are packing up the
effects of the Purple Emperor and of the poor Red Admiral."

"The collections?" I asked, entering the room. "You must be very careful
in packing those butterfly cases; the slightest jar might break wings
and antennas, you know."

Le Bihan shook hands with me and pointed to the great pile of boxes.

"They're all cork lined," he said, "but Fortin and I are putting felt
around each box. The Entomological Society of Paris pays the freight."

The combined collection of the Red Admiral and the Purple Emperor made a
magnificent display.

I lifted and inspected case after case set with gorgeous butterflies and
moths, each specimen carefully labelled with the name in Latin. There
were cases filled with crimson tiger moths all aflame with color; cases
devoted to the common yellow butterflies; symphonies in orange and pale
yellow; cases of soft gray and dun-colored sphinx moths; and cases of
grayish nettle-bed butterflies of the numerous family of Vanessa.

All alone in a great case by itself was pinned the purple emperor, the
Apatura Iris, that fatal specimen that had given the Purple Emperor his
name and quietus.

I remembered the butterfly, and stood looking at it with bent eyebrows.

Le Bihan glanced up from the floor where he was nailing down the lid of
a box full of cases.

"It is settled, then," said he, "that madame, your wife, gives the
Purple Emperor's entire Collection to the city of Paris?"

I nodded.

"Without accepting anything for it?"

"It is a gift," I said.

"Including the purple emperor there in the case? That butterfly is
worth a great deal of money," persisted Le Bihan.

"You don't suppose that we would wish to sell that specimen, do you?" I
answered a trifle sharply.

"If I were you I should destroy it," said the mayor in his high-pitched
voice.

"That would be nonsense," said I, "like your burying the brass cylinder
and scroll yesterday."

"It was not nonsense," said Le Bihan doggedly, "and I should prefer not
to discuss the subject of the scroll."

I looked at Max Portin, who immediately avoided my eyes.

"You are a pair of superstitious old women," said I, digging my hands
into my pockets; "you swallow every nursery tale that is invented."

"What of it?" said Le Bihan sulkily; "there's more truth than lies in
most of 'em."

"Oh!" I sneered, "does the Mayor of St. Gildas and St. Julien believe in
the loup-garou?"

"No, not in the loup-garou."

"In what, then--Jeanne-la-Flamme?"

"That," said Le Bihan with conviction, "is history."

"The devil it is!" said I; "and perhaps, Monsieur the mayor, your faith
in giants is unimpaired?"

"There were giants--everybody knows it," growled Max Fortin.

"And you a chemist!" I observed scornfully.

"Listen, Monsieur Darrel," squeaked Le Bihan; "you know yourself that
the Purple Emperor was a scientific man. Now suppose I should tell you
that he always refused to include in his collection a Death's
Messenger?"

"A what?" I exclaimed.

"You know what I mean--that moth that flies by night; some call it the
Death's Head, but in St. Gildas we call it 'Death's Messenger.'"

"Oh!" said I, "you mean that big sphinx moth that is commonly known as
the 'death's-head moth.' Why the mischief should the people here call it
death's messenger?"

"For hundreds of years it has been known as death's messenger in St.
Gildas," said Max Fortin. "Even Froissart speaks of it in his
commentaries on Jacques Sorgue's _Chronicles_. The book is in your
library."

"Sorgue? And who was Jacques Sorgue? I never read his book."

"Jacques Sorgue [Transcriber's note: the original reads "Sorque"] was the
son of some unfrocked priest--I forget. It was during the crusades."

"Good Heavens!" I burst out, "I've been hearing of nothing but crusades
and priests and death and sorcery ever since I kicked that skull into
the gravel pit, and I am tired of it, I tell you frankly. One would
think we lived in the dark ages. Do you know what year of our Lord it
is, Le Bihan?"

"Eighteen hundred and ninety-six," replied the mayor.

"And yet you two hulking men are afraid of a death's-head moth."

"I don't care to have one fly into the window," said Max Fortin; "it
means evil to the house and the people in it."

"God alone knows why he marked one of his creatures with a yellow
death's head on the back," observed Le Bihan piously, "but I take it
that he meant it as a warning; and I propose to profit by it," he added
triumphantly.

"See here, Le Bihan," I said; "by a stretch of imagination one can make
out a skull on the thorax of a certain big sphinx moth. What of it?"

"It is a bad thing to touch," said the mayor wagging his head.

"It squeaks when handled," added Max Fortin.

"Some creatures squeak all the time," I observed, looking hard at Le
Bihan.

"Pigs," added the mayor.

"Yes, and asses," I replied. "Listen, Le Bihan: do you mean to tell me
that you saw that skull roll uphill yesterday?"

The mayor shut his mouth tightly and picked up his hammer.

"Don't be obstinate," I said; "I asked you a question."

"And I refuse to answer," snapped Le Bihan. "Fortin saw what I saw; let
him talk about it."

I looked searchingly at the little chemist.

"I don't say that I saw it actually roll up out of the pit, all by
itself," said Fortin with a shiver, "but--but then, how did it come up
out of the pit, if it didn't roll up all by itself?"

"It didn't come up at all; that was a yellow cobblestone that you
mistook for the skull again," I replied. "You were nervous, Max."

"A--a very curious cobblestone, Monsieur Darrel," said Fortin.

"I also was a victim to the same hallucination," I continued, "and I
regret to say that I took the trouble to roll two innocent cobblestones
into the gravel pit, imagining each time that it was the skull I was
rolling."

"It was," observed Le Bihan with a morose shrug.

"It just shows," said I, ignoring the mayor's remark, "how easy it is to
fix up a train of coincidences so that the result seems to savor of the
supernatural. Now, last night my wife imagined that she saw a priest in
a mask peer in at her window----"

Fortin and Le Bihan scrambled hastily from their knees, dropping hammer
and nails.

"W-h-a-t--what's that?" demanded the mayor.

I repeated what I had said. Max Fortin turned livid.

"My God!" muttered Le Bihan, "the Black Priest is in St. Gildas!"

"D-don't you--you know the old prophecy?" stammered Fortin; "Froissart
quotes it from Jacques Sorgue:

"'When the Black Priest rises from the dead,
St. Gildas folk shall shriek in bed;
When the Black Priest rises from his grave,
May the good God St. Gildas save!'"

"Aristide Le Bihan," I said angrily, "and you, Max Fortin, I've got
enough of this nonsense! Some foolish lout from Bannalec has been in St.
Gildas playing tricks to frighten old fools like you. If you have
nothing better to talk about than nursery legends I'll wait until you
come to your senses. Good-morning." And I walked out, more disturbed
than I cared to acknowledge to myself.

The day had become misty and overcast. Heavy, wet clouds hung in the
east. I heard the surf thundering against the cliffs, and the gray gulls
squealed as they tossed and turned high in the sky. The tide was
creeping across the river sands, higher, higher, and I saw the seaweed
floating on the beach, and the lancons springing from the foam, silvery
threadlike flashes in the gloom. Curlew were flying up the river in twos
and threes; the timid sea swallows skimmed across the moors toward some
quiet, lonely pool, safe from the coming tempest. In every hedge field
birds were gathering, huddling together, twittering restlessly.

When I reached the cliffs I sat down, resting my chin on my clenched
hands. Already a vast curtain of rain, sweeping across the ocean miles
away, hid the island of Groix. To the east, behind the white semaphore
on the hills, black clouds crowded up over the horizon. After a little
the thunder boomed, dull, distant, and slender skeins of lightning
unraveled across the crest of the coming storm. Under the cliff at my
feet the surf rushed foaming over the shore, and the lancons jumped and
skipped and quivered until they seemed to be but the reflections of the
meshed lightning.

I turned to the east. It was raining over Groix, it was raining at
Sainte Barbe, it was raining now at the semaphore. High in the storm
whirl a few gulls pitched; a nearer cloud trailed veils of rain in its
wake; the sky was spattered with lightning; the thunder boomed.

As I rose to go, a cold raindrop fell upon the back of my hand, and
another, and yet another on my face. I gave a last glance at the sea,
where the waves were bursting into strange white shapes that seemed to
fling out menacing arms toward me. Then something moved on the cliff,
something black as the black rock it clutched--a filthy cormorant,
craning its hideous head at the sky.

Slowly I plodded homeward across the somber moorland, where the gorse
stems glimmered with a dull metallic green, and the heather, no longer
violet and purple, hung drenched and dun-colored among the dreary rocks.
The wet turf creaked under my heavy boots, the black-thorn scraped and
grated against knee and elbow. Over all lay a strange light, pallid,
ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into
my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after
rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and
yet there was no wind to drive it at such a pace.

Lys stood at the door as I turned into the garden, motioning me to
hasten; and then for the first time I became conscious that I was soaked
to the skin.

"However in the world did you come to stay out when such a storm
threatened?" she said. "Oh, you are dripping! Go quickly and change; I
have laid your warm underwear on the bed, Dick."

I kissed my wife, and went upstairs to change my dripping clothes for
something more comfortable.

When I returned to the morning room there was a driftwood fire on the
hearth, and Lys sat in the chimney corner embroidering.

"Catherine tells me that the fishing fleet from Lorient is out. Do you
think they are in danger, dear?" asked Lys, raising her blue eyes to
mine as I entered.

"There is no wind, and there will be no sea," said I, looking out of the
window. Far across the moor I could see the black cliffs looming in the
mist.

"How it rains!" murmured Lys; "come to the fire, Dick."

I threw myself on the fur rug, my hands in my pockets, my head on Lys's
knees.

"Tell me a story," I said. "I feel like a boy of ten."

Lys raised a finger to her scarlet lips. I always waited for her to do
that.

"Will you be very still, then?" she said.

"Still as death."

"Death," echoed a voice, very softly.

"Did you speak, Lys?" I asked, turning so that I could see her face.

"No; did you, Dick?"

"Who said 'death'?" I asked, startled.

"Death," echoed a voice, softly.

I sprang up and looked about. Lys rose too, her needles and embroidery
falling to the floor. She seemed about to faint, leaning heavily on me,
and I led her to the window and opened it a little way to give her air.
As I did so the chain lightning split the zenith, the thunder crashed,
and a sheet of rain swept into the room, driving with it something that
fluttered--something that flapped, and squeaked, and beat upon the rug
with soft, moist wings.

We bent over it together, Lys clinging to me, and we saw that it was a
death's-head moth drenched with rain.

The dark day passed slowly as we sat beside the fire, hand in hand, her
head against my breast, speaking of sorrow and mystery and death. For
Lys believed that there were things on earth that none might understand,
things that must be nameless forever and ever, until God rolls up the
scroll of life and all is ended. We spoke of hope and fear and faith,
and the mystery of the saints; we spoke of the beginning and the end, of
the shadow of sin, of omens, and of love. The moth still lay on the
floor quivering its somber wings in the warmth of the fire, the skull
and ribs clearly etched upon its neck and body.

"If it is a messenger of death to this house," I said, "why should we
fear, Lys?"

"Death should be welcome to those who love God," murmured Lys, and she
drew the cross from her breast and kissed it.

"The moth might die if I threw it out into the storm," I said after a
silence.

"Let it remain," sighed Lys.

Late that night my wife lay sleeping, and I sat beside her bed and read
in the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue. I shaded the candle, but Lys grew
restless, and finally I took the book down into the morning room, where
the ashes of the fire rustled and whitened on the hearth.

The death's-head moth lay on the rug before the fire where I had left
it. At first I thought it was dead, but when I looked closer I saw a
lambent fire in its amber eyes. The straight white shadow it cast across
the floor wavered as the candle flickered.

The pages of the Chronicle of Jacques Sorgue were damp and sticky; the
illuminated gold and blue initials left flakes of azure and gilt where
my hand brushed them.

"It is not paper at all; it is thin parchment," I said to myself; and I
held the discolored page close to the candle flame and read, translating
laboriously:

"I, Jacques Sorgue, saw all these things. And I saw the Black Mass
celebrated in the chapel of St. Gildas-on-the-Cliff. And it was said by
the Abbé Sorgue, my kinsman: for which deadly sin the apostate priest
was seized by the most noble Marquis of Plougastel and by him condemned
to be burned with hot irons, until his seared soul quit its body and fly
to its master the devil. But when the Black Priest lay in the crypt of
Plougastel, his master Satan came at night and set him free, and carried
him across land and sea to Mahmoud, which is Soldan or Saladin. And I,
Jacques Sorgue, traveling afterward by sea, beheld with my own eyes my
kinsman, the Black Priest of St. Gildas, borne along in the air upon a
vast black wing, which was the wing of his master Satan. And this was
seen also by two men of the crew."

I turned the page. The wings of the moth on the floor began to quiver. I
read on and on, my eyes blurring under the shifting candle flame. I read
of battles and of saints, and I learned how the Great Soldan made his
pact with Satan, and then I came to the Sieur de Trevec, and read how he
seized the Black Priest in the midst of Saladin's tents and carried him
away and cut off his head first branding him on the forehead. "And
before he suffered," said the Chronicle, "he cursed the Sieur de Trevec
and his descendants, and he said he would surely return to St. Gildas.
'For the violence you do to me, I will do violence to you. For the evil
I suffer at your hands, I will work evil on you and your descendants.
Woe to your children, Sieur de Trevec!'" There was a whirr, a beating of
strong wings, and my candle flashed up as in a sudden breeze. A humming
filled the room; the great moth darted hither and thither, beating,
buzzing, on ceiling and wall. I flung down my book and stepped forward.
Now it lay fluttering upon the window sill, and for a moment I had it
under my hand, but the thing squeaked and I shrank back. Then suddenly
it darted across the candle flame; the light flared and went out, and at
the same moment a shadow moved in the darkness outside. I raised my eyes
to the window. A masked face was peering in at me.

Quick as thought I whipped out my revolver and fired every cartridge,
but the face advanced beyond the window, the glass melting away before
it like mist, and through the smoke of my revolver I saw something creep
swiftly into the room. Then I tried to cry out, but the thing was at my
throat, and I fell backward among the ashes of the hearth.

* * * * *

When my eyes unclosed I was lying on the hearth, my head among the cold
ashes. Slowly I got on my knees, rose painfully, and groped my way to a
chair. On the floor lay my revolver, shining in the pale light of early
morning. My mind clearing by degrees, I looked, shuddering, at the
window. The glass was unbroken. I stooped stiffly, picked up my revolver
and opened the cylinder. Every cartridge had been fired. Mechanically I
closed the cylinder and placed the revolver in my pocket. The book, the
Chronicles of Jacques Sorgue, lay on the table beside me, and as I
started to close it I glanced at the page. It was all splashed with
rain, and the lettering had run, so that the page was merely a confused
blur of gold and red and black. As I stumbled toward the door I cast a
fearful glance over my shoulder. The death's-head moth crawled shivering
on the rug.

IV

The sun was about three hours high. I must have slept, for I was aroused
by the sudden gallop of horses under our window. People were shouting
and calling in the road. I sprang up and opened the sash. Le Bihan was
there, an image of helplessness, and Max Fortin stood beside him
polishing his glasses. Some gendarmes had just arrived from Quimperle,
and I could hear them around the corner of the house, stamping, and
rattling their sabres and carbines, as they led their horses into my
stable.

Lys sat up, murmuring half-sleepy, half-anxious questions.

"I don't know," I answered. "I am going out to see what it means."

"It is like the day they came to arrest you," Lys said, giving me a
troubled look. But I kissed her and laughed at her until she smiled too.
Then I flung on coat and cap and hurried down the stairs.

The first person I saw standing in the road was the Brigadier Durand.

"Hello!" said I, "have you come to arrest me again? What the devil is
all this fuss about, anyway?"

"We were telegraphed for an hour ago," said Durand briskly, "and for a
sufficient reason, I think. Look there, Monsieur Darrel!"

He pointed to the ground almost under my feet.

"Good heavens!" I cried, "where did that puddle of blood come from?"

"That's what I want to know, Monsieur Darrel. Max Fortin found it at
daybreak. See, it's splashed all over the grass, too. A trail of it
leads into your garden, across the flower beds to your very window, the
one that opens from the morning room. There is another trail leading
from this spot across the road to the cliffs, then to the gravel pit,
and thence across the moor to the forest of Kerselec. We are going to
mount in a minute and search the bosquets. Will you join us? Bon Dieu!
but the fellow bled like an ox. Max Fortin says it's human blood, or I
should not have believed it."

The little chemist of Quimperle came up at that moment, rubbing his
glasses with a colored handkerchief.

"Yes, it is human blood," he said, "but one thing puzzles me: the
corpuscles are yellow. I never saw any human blood before with yellow
corpuscles. But your English Doctor Thompson asserts that he has----"

"Well, it's human blood, anyway--isn't it?" insisted Durand,
impatiently.

"Ye-es," admitted Max Fortin.

"Then it's my business to trail it," said the big gendarme, and he
called his men and gave the order to mount.

"Did you hear anything last night?" asked Durand of me.

"I heard the rain. I wonder the rain did not wash away these traces."

"They must have come after the rain ceased. See this thick splash, how
it lies over and weighs down the wet grass blades. Pah!"

It was a heavy, evil-looking clot, and I stepped back from it, my throat
closing in disgust.

"My theory," said the brigadier, "is this: Some of those Biribi
fishermen, probably the Icelanders, got an extra glass of cognac into
their hides and quarreled on the road. Some of them were slashed, and
staggered to your house. But there is only one trail, and yet--and yet,
how could all that blood come from only one person? Well, the wounded
man, let us say, staggered first to your house and then back here, and
he wandered off, drunk and dying, God knows where. That's my theory."

"A very good one," said I calmly. "And you are going to trail him?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"At once. Will you come?"

"Not now. I'll gallop over by-and-bye. You are going to the edge of the
Kerselec forest?"

"Yes; you will hear us calling. Are you coming, Max Fortin? And you, Le
Bihan? Good; take the dog-cart."

The big gendarme tramped around the corner to the stable and presently
returned mounted on a strong gray horse, his sabre shone on his saddle;
his pale yellow and white facings were spotless. The little crowd of
white-coiffed women with their children fell back as Durand touched
spurs and clattered away followed by his two troopers. Soon after Le
Bihan and Max Fortin also departed in the mayor's dingy dog-cart.

"Are you coming?" piped Le Bihan shrilly.

"In a quarter of an hour," I replied, and went back to the house.

When I opened the door of the morning room the death's-head moth was
beating its strong wings against the window. For a second I hesitated,
then walked over and opened the sash. The creature fluttered out,
whirred over the flower beds a moment, then darted across the moorland
toward the sea. I called the servants together and questioned them.
Josephine, Catherine, Jean Marie Tregunc, not one of them had heard the
slightest disturbance during the night. Then I told Jean Marie to saddle
my horse, and while I was speaking Lys came down.

"Dearest," I began, going to her.

"You must tell me everything you know, Dick," she interrupted, looking
me earnestly in the face.

"But there is nothing to tell--only a drunken brawl, and some one
wounded."

"And you are going to ride--where, Dick?"

"Well, over to the edge of Kerselec forest. Durand and the mayor, and
Max Fortin, have gone on, following a--a trail."

"What trail?"

"Some blood."

"Where did they find it?"

"Out in the road there." Lys crossed herself.

"Does it come near our house?"

"Yes."

"How near?"

"It comes up to the morning room window," said I, giving in.

Her hand on my arm grew heavy. "I dreamed last night----"

"So did I--" but I thought of the empty cartridges in my revolver, and
stopped.

"I dreamed that you were in great danger, and I could not move hand or
foot to save you; but you had your revolver, and I called out to you to
fire----"

"I did fire!" I cried excitedly.

"You--you fired?"

I took her in my arms. "My darling," I said "something strange has
happened--something that I cannot understand as yet. But, of course,
there is an explanation. Last night I thought I fired at the Black
Priest."

"Ah!" gasped Lys.

"Is that what you dreamed?"

"Yes, yes, that was it! I begged you to fire----"

"And I did."

Her heart was beating against my breast. I held her close in silence.

"Dick," she said at length, "perhaps you killed the--the thing."

"If it was human I did not miss," I answered grimly. "And it was human,"
I went on, pulling myself together, ashamed of having so nearly gone to
pieces. "Of course it was human! The whole affair is plain enough. Not a
drunken brawl, as Durand thinks; it was a drunken lout's practical joke,
for which he has suffered. I suppose I must have filled him pretty full
of bullets, and he has crawled away to die in Kerselec forest. It's a
terrible affair; I'm sorry I fired so hastily; but that idiot Le Bihan
and Max Fortin have been working on my nerves till I am as hysterical as
a schoolgirl," I ended angrily.

"You fired--but the window glass was not shattered," said Lys in a low
voice.

"Well, the window was open, then. And as for the--the rest--I've got
nervous indigestion, and a doctor will settle the Black Priest for me,
Lys."

I glanced out of the window at Tregunc waiting with my horse at the
gate.

"Dearest, I think I had better go to join Durand and the others."

"I will go, too."

"Oh, no!"

"Yes, Dick."

"Don't, Lys."

"I shall suffer every moment you are away."

"The ride is too fatiguing, and we can't tell what unpleasant sight you
may come upon. Lys, you don't really think there is anything
supernatural in this affair?"

"Dick," she answered gently, "I am a Bretonne." With both arms around my
neck, my wife said, "Death is the gift of God. I do not fear it when we
are together. But alone--oh, my husband, I should fear a God who could
take you away from me!"

We kissed each other soberly, simply, like two children. Then Lys
hurried away to change her gown, and I paced up and down the garden
waiting for her.

She came, drawing on her slender gauntlets. I swung her into the saddle,
gave a hasty order to Jean Marie, and mounted.

Now, to quail under thoughts of terror on a morning like this, with Lys
in the saddle beside me, no matter what had happened or might happen
was impossible. Moreover, Môme came sneaking after us. I asked Tregunc
to catch him, for I was afraid he might be brained by our horses' hoofs
if he followed, but the wily puppy dodged and bolted after Lys, who was
trotting along the highroad. "Never mind," I thought; "if he's hit he'll
live, for he has no brains to lose."

Lys was waiting for me in the road beside the Shrine of Our Lady of St.
Gildas when I joined her. She crossed herself, I doffed my cap, then we
shook out our bridles and galloped toward the forest of Kerselec.

We said very little as we rode. I always loved to watch Lys in the
saddle. Her exquisite figure and lovely face were the incarnation of
youth and grace; her curling hair glistened like threaded gold.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the spoiled puppy Môme come bounding
cheerfully alongside, oblivious of our horses' heels. Our road swung
close to the cliffs. A filthy cormorant rose from the black rocks and
flapped heavily across our path. Lys's horse reared, but she pulled him
down, and pointed at the bird with her riding crop.

"I see," said I; "it seems to be going our way. Curious to see a
cormorant in a forest, isn't it?"

"It is a bad sign," said Lys. "You know the Morbihan proverb: 'When the
cormorant turns from the sea, Death laughs in the forest, and wise
woodsmen build boats.'"

"I wish," said I sincerely, "that there were fewer proverbs in
Brittany."

We were in sight of the forest now; across the gorse I could see the
sparkle of gendarmes' trappings, and the glitter of Le Bihan's
silver-buttoned jacket. The hedge was low and we took it without
difficulty, and trotted across the moor to where Le Bihan and Durand
stood gesticulating.

They bowed ceremoniously to Lys as we rode up.

"The trail is horrible--it is a river," said the mayor in his squeaky
voice. "Monsieur Darrel, I think perhaps madame would scarcely care to
come any nearer."

Lys drew bridle and looked at me.

"It is horrible!" said Durand, walking up beside me; "it looks as though
a bleeding regiment had passed this way. The trail winds and winds about
here in the thickets; we lose it at times, but we always find it again.
I can't understand how one man--no, nor twenty--could bleed like that!"

A halloo, answered by another, sounded from the depths of the forest.

"It's my men; they are following the trail," muttered the brigadier.
"God alone knows what is at the end!"

"Shall we gallop back, Lys?" I asked.

"No; let us ride along the western edge of the woods and dismount. The
sun is so hot now, and I should like to rest for a moment," she said.

"The western forest is clear of anything disagreeable," said Durand.

"Very well," I answered; "call me, Le Bihan, if you find anything."

Lys wheeled her mare, and I followed across the springy heather, Môme
trotting cheerfully in the rear.

We entered the sunny woods about a quarter of a kilometer from where we
left Durand. I took Lys from her horse, flung both bridles over a limb,
and, giving my wife my arm, aided her to a flat mossy rock which
overhung a shallow brook gurgling among the beech trees. Lys sat down
and drew off her gauntlets. Môme pushed his head into her lap, received
an undeserved caress, and came doubtfully toward me. I was weak enough
to condone his offense, but I made him lie down at my feet, greatly to
his disgust.

I rested my head on Lys's knees, looking up at the sky through the
crossed branches of the trees.

"I suppose I have killed him," I said. "It shocks me terribly, Lys."

"You could not have known, dear. He may have been a robber,
and--if--not--did--have you ever fired your revolver since that day four
years ago when the Red Admiral's son tried to kill you? But I know you
have not."

"No," said I, wondering. "It's a fact, I have not. Why?"

"And don't you remember that I asked you to let me load it for you the
day when Yves went off, swearing to kill you and his father?"

"Yes, I do remember. Well?"

"Well, I--I took the cartridges first to St. Gildas chapel and dipped
them in holy water. You must not laugh, Dick," said Lys gently, laying
her cool hands on my lips.

"Laugh, my darling!"

Overhead the October sky was pale amethyst, and the sunlight burned like
orange flame through the yellow leaves of beech and oak. Gnats and
midges danced and wavered overhead; a spider dropped from a twig halfway
to the ground and hung suspended on the end of his gossamer thread.

"Are you sleepy, dear?" asked Lys, bending over me.

"I am--a little; I scarcely slept two hours last night," I answered.

"You may sleep, if you wish," said Lys, and touched my eyes caressingly.

"Is my head heavy on your knees?"

"No, Dick."

I was already in a half doze; still I heard the brook babbling under the
beeches and the humming of forest flies overhead. Presently even these
were stilled.

The next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright, my ears ringing with a
scream, and I saw Lys cowering beside me, covering her white face with
both hands.

As I sprang to my feet she cried again and clung to my knees. I saw my
dog rush growling into a thicket, then I heard him whimper, and he came
backing out, whining, ears flat, tail down. I stooped and disengaged
Lys's hand.

"Don't go, Dick!" she cried. "O God, it's the Black Priest!"

In a moment I had leaped across the brook and pushed my way into the
thicket. It was empty. I stared about me; I scanned every tree trunk,
every bush. Suddenly I saw him. He was seated on a fallen log, his head
resting in his hands, his rusty black robe gathered around him. For a
moment my hair stirred under my cap; sweat started on forehead and cheek
bone; then I recovered my reason, and understood that the man was human
and was probably wounded to death. Ay, to death; for there at my feet,
lay the wet trail of blood, over leaves and stones, down into the little
hollow, across to the figure in black resting silently under the trees.

I saw that he could not escape even if he had the strength, for before
him, almost at his very feet, lay a deep, shining swamp.

As I stepped forward my foot broke a twig. At the sound the figure
started a little, then its head fell forward again. Its face was masked.
Walking up to the man, I bade him tell where he was wounded. Durand and
the others broke through the thicket at the same moment and hurried to
my side.

"Who are you who hide a masked face in a priest's robe?" said the
gendarme loudly.

There was no answer.

"See--see the stiff blood all over his robe," muttered Le Bihan to
Fortin.

"He will not speak," said I.

"He may be too badly wounded," whispered Le Bihan.

"I saw him raise his head," I said, "my wife saw him creep up here."

Durand stepped forward and touched the figure.

"Speak!" he said.

"Speak!" quavered Fortin.

Durand waited a moment, then with a sudden upward movement he stripped
off the mask and threw back the man's head. We were looking into the eye
sockets of a skull. Durand stood rigid; the mayor shrieked. The skeleton
burst out from its rotting robes and collapsed on the ground before us.
From between the staring ribs and the grinning teeth spurted a torrent
of black blood, showering the shrinking grasses; then the thing
shuddered, and fell over into the black ooze of the bog. Little bubbles
of iridescent air appeared from the mud; the bones were slowly engulfed,
and, as the last fragments sank out of sight, up from the depths and
along the bank crept a creature, shiny, shivering, quivering its wings.

It was a death's-head moth.

* * * * *

I wish I had time to tell you how Lys outgrew superstitions--for she
never knew the truth about the affair, and she never will know, since
she has promised not to read this book. I wish I might tell you about
the king and his coronation, and how the coronation robe fitted. I wish
that I were able to write how Yvonne and Herbert Stuart rode to a boar
hunt in Quimperle, and how the hounds raced the quarry right through the
town, overturning three gendarmes, the notary, and an old woman. But I
am becoming garrulous and Lys is calling me to come and hear the king
say that he is sleepy. And his highness shall not be kept waiting.

The Wood of the Dead

2007-04-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

THE WOOD OF THE DEAD
by Algernon Blackwood

One summer, in my wanderings with a knapsack, I was at luncheon in theroom of a wayside inn in the western country, when the door opened andthere entered an old rustic, who crossed close to my end of the tableand sat himself down very quietly in the seat by the bow window. Weexchanged glances, or, properly speaking, nods, for at the moment I didnot actually raise my eyes to his face, so concerned was I with theimportant business of satisfying an appetite gained by tramping twelvemiles over a difficult country.
The fine warm rain of seven o'clock, which had since risen in a kind ofluminous mist about the tree tops, now floated far overhead in a deepblue sky, and the day was settling down into a blaze of golden light. Itwas one of those days peculiar to Somerset and North Devon, when theorchards shine and the meadows seem to add a radiance of their own, sobrilliantly soft are the colourings of grass and foliage.
The inn-keeper's daughter, a little maiden with a simple countryloveliness, presently entered with a foaming pewter mug, enquired aftermy welfare, and went out again. Apparently she had not noticed the oldman sitting in the settle by the bow window, nor had he, for his part,so much as once turned his head in our direction.
Under ordinary circumstances I should probably have given no thought tothis other occupant of the room; but the fact that it was supposed to bereserved for my private use, and the singular thing that he sat lookingaimlessly out of the window, with no attempt to engage me inconversation, drew my eyes more than once somewhat curiously upon him,and I soon caught myself wondering why he sat there so silently, andalways with averted head.
He was, I saw, a rather bent old man in rustic dress, and the skin ofhis face was wrinkled like that of an apple; corduroy trousers werecaught up with a string below the knee, and he wore a sort of brownfustian jacket that was very much faded. His thin hand rested upon astoutish stick. He wore no hat and carried none, and I noticed that hishead, covered with silvery hair, was finely shaped and gave theimpression of something noble.
Though rather piqued by his studied disregard of my presence, I came tothe conclusion that he probably had something to do with the littlehostel and had a perfect right to use this room with freedom, and Ifinished my luncheon without breaking the silence and then took thesettle opposite to smoke a pipe before going on my way.
Through the open window came the scents of the blossoming fruit trees;the orchard was drenched in sunshine and the branches danced lazily inthe breeze; the grass below fairly shone with white and yellow daisies,and the red roses climbing in profusion over the casement mingled theirperfume with the sweetly penetrating odour of the sea.
It was a place to dawdle in, to lie and dream away a whole afternoon,watching the sleepy butterflies and listening to the chorus of birdswhich seemed to fill every corner of the sky. Indeed, I was alreadydebating in my mind whether to linger and enjoy it all instead of takingthe strenuous pathway over the hills, when the old rustic in the settleopposite suddenly turned his face towards me for the first time andbegan to speak.
His voice had a quiet dreamy note in it that was quite in harmony withthe day and the scene, but it sounded far away, I thought, almost asthough it came to me from outside where the shadows were weaving theireternal tissue of dreams upon the garden floor. Moreover, there was notrace in it of the rough quality one might naturally have expected, and,now that I saw the full face of the speaker for the first time, I notedwith something like a start that the deep, gentle eyes seemed far morein keeping with the timbre of the voice than with the rough and verycountrified appearance of the clothes and manner. His voice set pleasantwaves of sound in motion towards me, and the actual words, if I rememberrightly, were--
"You are a stranger in these parts?" or "Is not this part of the countrystrange to you?"
There was no "sir," nor any outward and visible sign of the deferenceusually paid by real country folk to the town-bred visitor, but in itsplace a gentleness, almost a sweetness, of polite sympathy that was farmore of a compliment than either.
I answered that I was wandering on foot through a part of the countrythat was wholly new to me, and that I was surprised not to find a placeof such idyllic loveliness marked upon my map.
"I have lived here all my life," he said, with a sigh, "and am nevertired of coming back to it again."
"Then you no longer live in the immediate neighbourhood?"
"I have moved," he answered briefly, adding after a pause in which hiseyes seemed to wander wistfully to the wealth of blossoms beyond thewindow; "but I am almost sorry, for nowhere else have I found thesunshine lie so warmly, the flowers smell so sweetly, or the winds andstreams make such tender music. . . ."
His voice died away into a thin stream of sound that lost itself in therustle of the rose-leaves climbing in at the window, for he turned hishead away from me as he spoke and looked out into the garden. But it wasimpossible to conceal my surprise, and I raised my eyes in frankastonishment on hearing so poetic an utterance from such a figure of aman, though at the same time realising that it was not in the leastinappropriate, and that, in fact, no other sort of expression could haveproperly been expected from him.
"I am sure you are right," I answered at length, when it was clear hehad ceased speaking; "or there is something of enchantment here--of realfairy-like enchantment--that makes me think of the visions of childhooddays, before one knew anything of--of--"
I had been oddly drawn into his vein of speech, some inner forcecompelling me. But here the spell passed and I could not catch thethoughts that had a moment before opened a long vista before my innervision.
"To tell you the truth," I concluded lamely, "the place fascinates meand I am in two minds about going further--"
Even at this stage I remember thinking it odd that I should be talkinglike this with a stranger whom I met in a country inn, for it has alwaysbeen one of my failings that to strangers my manner is brief tosurliness. It was as though we were figures meeting in a dream, speakingwithout sound, obeying laws not operative in the everyday working world,and about to play with a new scale of space and time perhaps. But myastonishment passed quickly into an entirely different feeling when Ibecame aware that the old man opposite had turned his head from thewindow again, and was regarding me with eyes so bright they seemedalmost to shine with an inner flame. His gaze was fixed upon my facewith an intense ardour, and his whole manner had suddenly become alertand concentrated. There was something about him I now felt for the firsttime that made little thrills of excitement run up and down my back. Imet his look squarely, but with an inward tremor.
"Stay, then, a little while longer," he said in a much lower and deepervoice than before; "stay, and I will teach you something of the purposeof my coming."
He stopped abruptly. I was conscious of a decided shiver.
"You have a special purpose then--in coming back?" I asked, hardlyknowing what I was saying.
"To call away someone," he went on in the same thrilling voice, "someonewho is not quite ready to come, but who is needed elsewhere for aworthier purpose." There was a sadness in his manner that mystified memore than ever.
"You mean--?" I began, with an unaccountable access of trembling.
"I have come for someone who must soon move, even as I have moved."
He looked me through and through with a dreadfully piercing gaze, but Imet his eyes with a full straight stare, trembling though I was, and Iwas aware that something stirred within me that had never stirredbefore, though for the life of me I could not have put a name to it, orhave analysed its nature. Something lifted and rolled away. For onesingle second I understood clearly that the past and the future existactually side by side in one immense Present; that it was _I_ who movedto and fro among shifting, protean appearances.
The old man dropped his eyes from my face, and the momentary glimpse ofa mightier universe passed utterly away. Reason regained its sway over adull, limited kingdom.
"Come to-night," I heard the old man say, "come to me to-night into theWood of the Dead. Come at midnight--"
Involuntarily I clutched the arm of the settle for support, for I thenfelt that I was speaking with someone who knew more of the real thingsthat are and will be, than I could ever know while in the body, workingthrough the ordinary channels of sense--and this curious half-promise ofa partial lifting of the veil had its undeniable effect upon me.
The breeze from the sea had died away outside, and the blossoms werestill. A yellow butterfly floated lazily past the window. The song ofthe birds hushed--I smelt the sea--I smelt the perfume of heated summerair rising from fields and flowers, the ineffable scents of June and ofthe long days of the year--and with it, from countless green meadowsbeyond, came the hum of myriad summer life, children's voices, sweetpipings, and the sound of water falling.
I knew myself to be on the threshold of a new order of experience--of anecstasy. Something drew me forth with a sense of inexpressible yearningtowards the being of this strange old man in the window seat, and for amoment I knew what it was to taste a mighty and wonderful sensation, andto touch the highest pinnacle of joy I have ever known. It lasted forless than a second, and was gone; but in that brief instant of time thesame terrible lucidity came to me that had already shown me how the pastand future exist in the present, and I realised and understood thatpleasure and pain are one and the same force, for the joy I had justexperienced included also all the pain I ever had felt, or ever couldfeel. . . .
The sunshine grew to dazzling radiance, faded, passed away. The shadowspaused in their dance upon the grass, deepened a moment, and then meltedinto air. The flowers of the fruit trees laughed with their littlesilvery laughter as the wind sighed over their radiant eyes the old,old tale of its personal love. Once or twice a voice called my name. Awonderful sensation of lightness and power began to steal over me.
Suddenly the door opened and the inn-keeper's daughter came in. By allordinary standards, her's was a charming country loveliness, born of thestars and wild-flowers, of moonlight shining through autumn mists uponthe river and the fields; yet, by contrast with the higher order ofbeauty I had just momentarily been in touch with, she seemed almostugly. How dull her eyes, how thin her voice, how vapid her smile, andinsipid her whole presentment.
For a moment she stood between me and the occupant of the window seatwhile I counted out the small change for my meal and for her services;but when, an instant later, she moved aside, I saw that the settle wasempty and that there was no longer anyone in the room but our twoselves.
This discovery was no shock to me; indeed, I had almost expected it, andthe man had gone just as a figure goes out of a dream, causing nosurprise and leaving me as part and parcel of the same dream withoutbreaking of continuity. But, as soon as I had paid my bill and thusresumed in very practical fashion the thread of my normal consciousness,I turned to the girl and asked her if she knew the old man who had beensitting in the window seat, and what he had meant by the Wood of theDead.
The maiden started visibly, glancing quickly round the empty room, butanswering simply that she had seen no one. I described him in greatdetail, and then, as the description grew clearer, she turned a littlepale under her pretty sunborn and said very gravely that it must havebeen the ghost.
"Ghost! What ghost?"
"Oh, the village ghost," she said quietly, coming closer to my chairwith a little nervous movement of genuine alarm, and adding in a lowervoice, "He comes before a death, they say!"
It was not difficult to induce the girl to talk, and the story she toldme, shorn of the superstition that had obviously gathered with the yearsround the memory of a strangely picturesque figure, was an interestingand peculiar one.
The inn, she said, was originally a farmhouse, occupied by a yeomanfarmer, evidently of a superior, if rather eccentric, character, who hadbeen very poor until he reached old age, when a son died suddenly inthe Colonies and left him an unexpected amount of money, almost afortune.
The old man thereupon altered no whit his simple manner of living, butdevoted his income entirely to the improvement of the village and to theassistance of its inhabitants; he did this quite regardless of hispersonal likes and dislikes, as if one and all were absolutely alike tohim, objects of a genuine and impersonal benevolence. People had alwaysbeen a little afraid of the man, not understanding his eccentricities,but the simple force of this love for humanity changed all that in avery short space of time; and before he died he came to be known as theFather of the Village and was held in great love and veneration by all.
A short time before his end, however, he began to act queerly. He spenthis money just as usefully and wisely, but the shock of sudden wealthafter a life of poverty, people said, had unsettled his mind. He claimedto see things that others did not see, to hear voices, and to havevisions. Evidently, he was not of the harmless, foolish, visionaryorder, but a man of character and of great personal force, for thepeople became divided in their opinions, and the vicar, good man,regarded and treated him as a "special case." For many, his name andatmosphere became charged almost with a spiritual influence that wasnot of the best. People quoted texts about him; kept when possible outof his way, and avoided his house after dark. None understood him, butthough the majority loved him, an element of dread and mystery becameassociated with his name, chiefly owing to the ignorant gossip of thefew.
A grove of pine trees behind the farm--the girl pointed them out to meon the slope of the hill--he said was the Wood of the Dead, because justbefore anyone died in the village he saw them walk into that wood,singing. None who went in ever came out again. He often mentioned thenames to his wife, who usually published them to all the inhabitantswithin an hour of her husband's confidence; and it was found that thepeople he had seen enter the wood--died. On warm summer nights he wouldsometimes take an old stick and wander out, hatless, under the pines,for he loved this wood, and used to say he met all his old friendsthere, and would one day walk in there never to return. His wife triedto break him gently off this habit, but he always had his own way; andonce, when she followed and found him standing under a great pine in thethickest portion of the grove, talking earnestly to someone she couldnot see, he turned and rebuked her very gently, but in such a way thatshe never repeated the experiment, saying--
"You should never interrupt me, Mary, when I am talking with the others;for they teach me, remember, wonderful things, and I must learn all Ican before I go to join them."
This story went like wild-fire through the village, increasing withevery repetition, until at length everyone was able to give an accuratedescription of the great veiled figures the woman declared she had seenmoving among the trees where her husband stood. The innocent pine-grovenow became positively haunted, and the title of "Wood of the Dead" clungnaturally as if it had been applied to it in the ordinary course ofevents by the compilers of the Ordnance Survey.
On the evening of his ninetieth birthday the old man went up to his wifeand kissed her. His manner was loving, and very gentle, and there wassomething about him besides, she declared afterwards, that made herslightly in awe of him and feel that he was almost more of a spirit thana man.
He kissed her tenderly on both cheeks, but his eyes seemed to lookright through her as he spoke.
"Dearest wife," he said, "I am saying good-bye to you, for I am nowgoing into the Wood of the Dead, and I shall not return. Do not followme, or send to search, but be ready soon to come upon the same journeyyourself."
The good woman burst into tears and tried to hold him, but he easilyslipped from her hands, and she was afraid to follow him. Slowly she sawhim cross the field in the sunshine, and then enter the cool shadows ofthe grove, where he disappeared from her sight.
That same night, much later, she woke to find him lying peacefully byher side in bed, with one arm stretched out towards her, _dead_. Herstory was half believed, half doubted at the time, but in a very fewyears afterwards it evidently came to be accepted by all thecountryside. A funeral service was held to which the people flocked ingreat numbers, and everyone approved of the sentiment which led thewidow to add the words, "The Father of the Village," after the usualtexts which appeared upon the stone over his grave.
This, then, was the story I pieced together of the village ghost as thelittle inn-keeper's daughter told it to me that afternoon in theparlour of the inn.
"But you're not the first to say you've seen him," the girl concluded;"and your description is just what we've always heard, and that window,they say, was just where he used to sit and think, and think, when hewas alive, and sometimes, they say, to cry for hours together."
"And would you feel afraid if you had seen him?" I asked, for the girlseemed strangely moved and interested in the whole story.
"I think so," she answered timidly. "Surely, if he spoke to me. He didspeak to _you_, didn't he, sir?" she asked after a slight pause.
"He said he had come for someone."
"Come for someone," she repeated. "Did he say--" she went onfalteringly.
"No, he did not say for whom," I said quickly, noticing the suddenshadow on her face and the tremulous voice.
"Are you really sure, sir?"
"Oh, quite sure," I answered cheerfully. "I did not even ask him." Thegirl looked at me steadily for nearly a whole minute as though therewere many things she wished to tell me or to ask. But she said nothing,and presently picked up her tray from the table and walked slowly outof the room.
Instead of keeping to my original purpose and pushing on to the nextvillage over the hills, I ordered a room to be prepared for me at theinn, and that afternoon I spent wandering about the fields and lyingunder the fruit trees, watching the white clouds sailing out over thesea. The Wood of the Dead I surveyed from a distance, but in the villageI visited the stone erected to the memory of the "Father of theVillage"--who was thus, evidently, no mythical personage--and saw alsothe monuments of his fine unselfish spirit: the schoolhouse he built,the library, the home for the aged poor, and the tiny hospital.
That night, as the clock in the church tower was striking half-pasteleven, I stealthily left the inn and crept through the dark orchard andover the hayfield in the direction of the hill whose southern slope wasclothed with the Wood of the Dead. A genuine interest impelled me to theadventure, but I also was obliged to confess to a certain sinking in myheart as I stumbled along over the field in the darkness, for I wasapproaching what might prove to be the birth-place of a real countrymyth, and a spot already lifted by the imaginative thoughts of aconsiderable number of people into the region of the haunted andill-omened.
The inn lay below me, and all round it the village clustered in a softblack shadow unrelieved by a single light. The night was moonless, yetdistinctly luminous, for the stars crowded the sky. The silence of deepslumber was everywhere; so still, indeed, that every time my foot kickedagainst a stone I thought the sound must be heard below in the villageand waken the sleepers.
I climbed the hill slowly, thinking chiefly of the strange story of thenoble old man who had seized the opportunity to do good to his fellowsthe moment it came his way, and wondering why the causes that operateceaselessly behind human life did not always select such admirableinstruments. Once or twice a night-bird circled swiftly over my head,but the bats had long since gone to rest, and there was no other sign oflife stirring.
Then, suddenly, with a singular thrill of emotion, I saw the first treesof the Wood of the Dead rise in front of me in a high black wall. Theircrests stood up like giant spears against the starry sky; and thoughthere was no perceptible movement of the air on my cheek I heard afaint, rushing sound among their branches as the night breeze passed toand fro over their countless little needles. A remote, hushed murmurrose overhead and died away again almost immediately; for in these treesthe wind seems to be never absolutely at rest, and on the calmest daythere is always a sort of whispering music among their branches.
For a moment I hesitated on the edge of this dark wood, and listenedintently. Delicate perfumes of earth and bark stole out to meet me.Impenetrable darkness faced me. Only the consciousness that I wasobeying an order, strangely given, and including a mighty privilege,enabled me to find the courage to go forward and step in boldly underthe trees.
Instantly the shadows closed in upon me and "something" came forward tomeet me from the centre of the darkness. It would be easy enough to meetmy imagination half-way with fact, and say that a cold hand grasped myown and led me by invisible paths into the unknown depths of the grove;but at any rate, without stumbling, and always with the positiveknowledge that I was going straight towards the desired object, Ipressed on confidently and securely into the wood. So dark was it that,at first, not a single star-beam pierced the roof of branches overhead;and, as we moved forward side by side, the trees shifted silently pastus in long lines, row upon row, squadron upon squadron, like the unitsof a vast, soundless army.
And, at length, we came to a comparatively open space where the treeshalted upon us for a while, and, looking up, I saw the white river ofthe sky beginning to yield to the influence of a new light that nowseemed spreading swiftly across the heavens.
"It is the dawn coming," said the voice at my side that I certainlyrecognised, but which seemed almost like a whispering from the trees,"and we are now in the heart of the Wood of the Dead."
We seated ourselves on a moss-covered boulder and waited the coming ofthe sun. With marvellous swiftness, it seemed to me, the light in theeast passed into the radiance of early morning, and when the wind awokeand began to whisper in the tree tops, the first rays of the risen sunfell between the trunks and rested in a circle of gold at our feet.
"Now, come with me," whispered my companion in the same deep voice, "fortime has no existence here, and that which I would show you is already_there_!"
We trod gently and silently over the soft pine needles. Already the sunwas high over our heads, and the shadows of the trees coiled closelyabout their feet. The wood became denser again, but occasionally wepassed through little open bits where we could smell the hot sunshineand the dry, baked pine needles. Then, presently, we came to the edge ofthe grove, and I saw a hayfield lying in the blaze of day, and twohorses basking lazily with switching tails in the shafts of a ladenhay-waggon.
So complete and vivid was the sense of reality, that I remember thegrateful realisation of the cool shade where we sat and looked out uponthe hot world beyond.
The last pitchfork had tossed up its fragrant burden, and the greathorses were already straining in the shafts after the driver, as hewalked slowly in front with one hand upon their bridles. He was astalwart fellow, with sunburned neck and hands. Then, for the firsttime, I noticed, perched aloft upon the trembling throne of hay, thefigure of a slim young girl. I could not see her face, but her brownhair escaped in disorder from a white sun-bonnet, and her still brownerhands held a well-worn hay rake. She was laughing and talking with thedriver, and he, from time to time, cast up at her ardent glances ofadmiration--glances that won instant smiles and soft blushes inresponse.
The cart presently turned into the roadway that skirted the edge of thewood where we were sitting. I watched the scene with intense interestand became so much absorbed in it that I quite forgot the manifold,strange steps by which I was permitted to become a spectator.
"Come down and walk with me," cried the young fellow, stopping a momentin front of the horses and opening wide his arms. "Jump! and I'll catchyou!"
"Oh, oh," she laughed, and her voice sounded to me as the happiest,merriest laughter I had ever heard from a girl's throat. "Oh, oh! that'sall very well. But remember I'm Queen of the Hay, and I must ride!"
"Then I must come and ride beside you," he cried, and began at once toclimb up by way of the driver's seat. But, with a peal of silverylaughter, she slipped down easily over the back of the hay to escapehim, and ran a little way along the road. I could see her quite clearly,and noticed the charming, natural grace of her movements, and theloving expression in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder to makesure he was following. Evidently, she did not wish to escape for long,certainly not for ever.
In two strides the big, brown swain was after her, leaving the horses todo as they pleased. Another second and his arms would have caught theslender waist and pressed the little body to his heart. But, just atthat instant, the old man beside me uttered a peculiar cry. It was lowand thrilling, and it went through me like a sharp sword.
HE had called her by her own name--and she had heard.
For a second she halted, glancing back with frightened eyes. Then, witha brief cry of despair, the girl swerved aside and dived in swiftlyamong the shadows of the trees.
But the young man saw the sudden movement and cried out to herpassionately--
"Not that way, my love! Not that way! It's the Wood of the Dead!"
She threw a laughing glance over her shoulder at him, and the windcaught her hair and drew it out in a brown cloud under the sun. But thenext minute she was close beside me, lying on the breast of mycompanion, and I was certain I heard the words repeatedly uttered withmany sighs: "Father, you called, and I have come. And I come willingly,for I am very, very tired."
At any rate, so the words sounded to me, and mingled with them I seemedto catch the answer in that deep, thrilling whisper I already knew: "Andyou shall sleep, my child, sleep for a long, long time, until it is timefor you to begin the journey again."
In that brief second of time I had recognised the face and voice of theinn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke fromthe lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night,the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the wholescene was swallowed up in a wave of utter blackness.
Again the chill fingers seemed to seize my hand, and I was guided by theway I had come to the edge of the wood, and crossing the hayfield stillslumbering in the starlight, I crept back to the inn and went to bed.
A year later I happened to be in the same part of the country, and thememory of the strange summer vision returned to me with the addedsoftness of distance. I went to the old village and had tea under thesame orchard trees at the same inn.
But the little maid of the inn did not show her face, and I tookoccasion to enquire of her father as to her welfare and her whereabouts.
"Married, no doubt," I laughed, but with a strange feeling that clutchedat my heart.
"No, sir," replied the inn-keeper sadly, "not married--though she wasjust going to be--but dead. She got a sunstroke in the hayfields, just afew days after you were here, if I remember rightly, and she was gonefrom us in less than a week."

2007-04-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

9000 BC by Benyan Ali Sinjin

Floating above an expanse of depth, slow with ease; soaring lightly over immense darkness. Body flowing free from the hold of gravity. Where every cold touches - touches cold everywhere. Skin brushing; slick and smooth rushing flicks of body; arms churn, and hands clutch. Muscles pull rapid strokes - as the surface above glistens with reflections: refracted in black, white, gold and aquamarine.
1

Gliding forward, hands puncture the mirrored light of playful shade, then break through into the brightness of day. Cascade-laughter erupts in all head-shaking directions.Fiery sparks of sunlight and water explode the air: Scattering with a bejewelled shattering. Erupting iridescent in a tree of light that slowly falls. . . glitters. . . shivers. . . into illusions of summer-rain.“Praethos! Praethos! Come and look!” sings a voice, shrill with thrills. A dark head of wet hair turns to see who calls him from his comfortably suspended position; cold in the ripples and gently swirling sounds. A boy, dressed in a simple white robe and sandals, waves his arms furiously and calls out again “Praethos! Praethos! Its Them! They have arrived!” before turning, and clambering up the dark grey rocks; and finally vanishing over the top. His voice leaving a trail of “Praethos!” fading away behind him in the sunlight.
2

A deep breath fills his lungs.Quick, a burst of kicking erupts at his feet, and Praethos arcs his body beneath the dark surface. His limbs work decisively, cutting the sensual biting of the icier inversion layers lower down. Further into the abyss he descends in purposeful sweeps from strong shoulders.Then his body slows and arights itself; eyes squinting through the bubbles and the shadows, and the hints of sunlight.He notices a familiar hole in the rocks, from where a dim wavering glow of light emanates - and his arms move him powerfully towards it. Body, bending and arcing with every timed stroke and kick, until he is through the hole, along the faintly lit tunnel, to its end.
3

He surfaces inside a chamber carved out of black rock; inhales the cool air with desperate relief; and finds his way to a set of carved steps, in calm even breast-strokes; hardly rippling the encompassing surface of blackness.His naked body rises out of the water - feels the slippery moss between his toes on the uneven stone floor, then walks through a wide clear-lit corridor. Up a long flight of well-spaced stairs he moves, into a room which is warmed by the natural light of the Sun shining its way through a large open walkway. Following the allure of its honeyed warmth, Praethos walks out onto the stone balcony which is suspended high over a dark and lush valley. With the sound of a soft-roaring waterfall, echoing its thunderous chorus in the background, he notices the large oval shape of the Airship with its six curved and ribbed sail-wings, some distance away.
4

It makes its way up the valley, skimming the tops of the taller trees. Black and silver colours flicker on its surface, playing games of deception with his vision in the reflecting sunlight.A large ship this one: about three-hundred foot long; and its broadest pair of sail-wings give it about a four-hundred foot wingspan. It bares the gold and red emblem of the Sun on it's sails.These are certainly the Sun-Priests from Tillawanda arriving two days ahead of schedule. They must have had favourable winds; and certainly good sunlight as well, for the single large propeller that helps drive the ship forward, is spinning fast, powered by the energy of the Sun; which is absorbed into the strangely ever-moving black and silver surface.
5

The rapid ‘thwap-thwap’ of its blade cuts the air, reverberating through the valley, and slicing the wind with an approaching rhythm. Buoyant in the turquoise sky, the great propeller slows, then comes to an abrupt halt, as the ship lazily loses speed.For a moment it hovers silently, suspended only by its lighter-than-air hull. Then its glittering wings turn to opaque black, as they begin folding back with a high-pitched whining sound.By the time the floating vessel is tethered, and its crew cabins winched to the ground, Praethos has found his way to join the smallish greeting party gathered amongst the shadows beneath its glittering hull. Being this close to such an Airship is a truly remarkable sight to behold, as the light becomes bent and scattered by the strange surface of the ship. As the passenger cabin opens, the shimmering light from above has an uncanny effect on the faces of the Priests.
6

Their features seem to light upin angelic smiles one moment, and then flicker dark and demonic the next. An illusionary play on light and dark which leaves Praethos feeling more than a little uncertain. Wandering slowly through the outskirts of Galgary Vellen, he looks up at the familiar buildings: High and narrow, roundly curved in yellow cones, intertwined with orange-dusty streets of cobblestone.Galgary Vellen - his home-town, had evolved around the natural Lake Tigroz, which collects and then empties the raging Black Horse River over the Falls of Vellen, more than a thousand feet to a large plunge-pool below.Praethos stands up high on the rocks that make up the natural dam wall.
7

He absorbs the expansive view over the green valley way below, notices how, when the Sun is very near to setting, the Black Horse River flickers elusively between the trees far below and into the distance. A shadow moves to his left. . .Praethos' green eyes dart out from behind the darkness of his thick longish hair - and his face breaks out into a grin: “hello sister - how goes it? What news?”Her hair is straight and black, her eyes pale blue - and she is momentarily startled by being discovered half-way through her stalk. She recovers herself: “Good news for you - the Priests seek an acolyte, or some such thing - but the offer is most likely beneath you, for your heart is at the bottom of that muddy old lake, I'm sure.” Her sharply defined features cut open the space between them, which her eyes fill with an intense gaze of turquoise.
8

His voice resonates amidst the silence: “I'll miss you too when I'm gone - I intend to make it back as well - and when I come back I'll own this muddy lake, and whatever lies at the bottom of it. But as for my heart, sweet Hilaris, even I know not where that lies. . .”“As to the honesty of your heart, I'm sure it is doubtful - but those Priests are more doubtful too: Since that ship has been here my mushroom crop has failed almost every morning.” Black hair falls across her face, and her eyes drop to his feet.She fiddles with her fingers, speaking with barely audible tones. “Do not go brother, they are a dangerous fearful cult. Many who have joined them have never even been heard of again. And, those that have returned seem changed, and soon move off elsewhere as they cannot bare to be around people that knew them as they were before.” She looks up again and opens her eyes wide, the ice, the azure, freezing his lips before a word escapes them.
9

Knowing that he will not be persuaded, no more is said. Instead they peer within each other. In still agreement the mood changes and their hearts lighten into coy smiles.Running through the empty streets, leaping the walls; and clambering over rocks. Their outer shells are shed, and they are children in the water, frozen immortal in the blackness of the nearing night; lit on the one side by the last rays of the Sun, and on the other by moonlight.Their shadows, hidden in the soft lapping of the Lake; their breathing, drowned by the rumbling sound of waterfall pound.Chimes of softened bubbles. Bodies are silhouettes of shade and flesh; darkness enmeshed in watery-light. Quick flicks of feet and teeth move ‘midst the slow shadows beneath the Lake's flashing surface.
10

The weightless motion of their complementary forms enthral the interplay of eyes and glistening thighs, down into a wintry tomb of night and cool drifts. Upon the bottom of the rocks where the crabs scuttle; here secrets keep their own subtle gloom. Night tries to hide away the moon in its half-seen realm. And; there are no deep secrets that are not in darkness revealed.Above what the blue-black mysteries conceal, starlight illuminates the fluidity of truth that denies its very being therein. And sheds its own light in the gloom of brilliance, and perfect tone of moonlit skin.“Do not go. . .”“I'm touched. . . by your concern Hilaris. . . but I do think you're being a bit superstitious. I'm only going to Tillawanda - not the edge of The World.”
11

As the clouds are thick, the large propeller of the Airship turns lazily; yet the wind is strong, and so the sail-wings are angled to favour its steady blowing. In this light the ship is mostly black, except for flashes of silver, which make it flicker like a gigantic star.The cabin of the Airship is surprisingly roomy, being able to seat more than the twelve that are in it. Praethos being the only one not wearing the pale-yellow robes of the Priests with their characteristic emblem of a large gold and red Sun emblazoned on its front and back.“So you are the new acolyte,” nods one of the Priests in his direction, “have you been told yet of your first duty?”“I’m to find my way to someone called Boletus in Tillawanda.”
12

The Priest looks startled for a moment, “So you're going to join the Vinolentia?”“That was the place I was told. . . I think. . . what exactly are the Vinolentia?”The Priest looks taken aback for a moment, then bursts out laughing; many of the others joining in. Praethos laughs red-faced with them, not exactly sure what the joke is, but not wanting to offend the Priests. Yet, they seem friendly enough.As the laughter rains down warmly on his cheeks he looks around at their faces, their laughs are hollow-eyed and distant, yet with a knowing look. He notices that there is only one woman amongst the lot. Pity. He had heard that there were Priestesses aplenty in Tillawanda.
13

A bothered looking middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, and a maniacal nervous chuckle approaches him on his entry to the Order of the Vinolentia. “My name is Boletus, and you are...?”“Praethos... uh - sir”“Well, 'Praethos-uh-sir' welcome to Vinolentia - you are to complete one week’s training. If you do it successfully you will be given your Robe. However, the nature of the training is nothing easy. You may die. You may go insane. In truth, anything may happen if you fail the Testing. Nothing is certain. If you undertake to continue, it will be without any guarantee, promise, or responsibility on our part. Are you still interested?”Up until then, Praethos had been humbly expecting to do a few rituals, gain a bit of status, learn a few well crafted Priestly phrases, and enjoy the life of a Sun-priest.
14

But at this unexpected attitude from Boletus, he feels more than a little bit startled, and begins to doubt his choice in coming to Tillawanda entirely. Yet, something pricks up his interest: “What makes it so dangerous?”“You will have to look into the eye of God. If you cannot bare your own true reflection, and instead try and hide in your shadows; your spirit will be melted, even though your body will live on.It will feel like your head has been removed and your insides torn out, your flesh has been shredded and your brain has been mashed, your blood boiled and evaporated. And then, even your bones will feel like they have been turned to dust. But because your body will still be alive, you will feel this agony over and over, for the rest of your life.”“And if I can bare the eye of God upon me?”
15

“No-one can bare the eye of God upon them. You will go to the Great Pyramid, and the filters in the stone will shield you from all but a sliver of His gaze. The effect is never the same, so if you can withstand just that sliver, then the grace you may win, will be by the grace of the Great Sun God. None of us can tell the result. The choice, and the consequences of that choice, rest entirely upon yourself. May you walk in the light.”Praethos lay on his back, paralysed with fear - sweat oozing thick and sticky from every pore in his body; the heat unbearable; the concentration intensely bulging from his eyes - their green waters surrounded by blood-red-vessels.He watches as the Priest pours some golden liquid from a clay goblet into his mouth. It is. . . honey. . . yet, it has a pungent aroma which triggers an ancient instinct to expel it.
16

Yet Praethos is aware that it is too late - any such action could be dangerous. He has to relinquish his will. . . and so swallows the vile, yet seductive concoction.Its effects are almost immediate as his central sense of being collapses into an inward fall, which screams silently within, as he plunges into the depths of his core. Images of his birth and youth, his life, his love, his decay and sadness wash over his mind like a cool stream of awareness.He feels the agony of the birth canal, the blind fury of a wailing child. The wonder of first love. The cynicism of first death. The first-time awareness of how passion is the bond that unites love and death as a singularity that can never be divided.Then a brief hidden vision of his own death avoids the full circle of his mind's awareness . . . and darkness . . .
17

He lies stretched out upon the warm grey stone. Four Priests arrive, and lifting his body up, carry it up a mountain, and over to the entrance of a pyramid, which is carved in a single block out of the dusty top of a rocky-yellow-outcrop.About a hundred foot at its highest point, the perfect triangular shape of the pyramid casts no shadow as the Sun climbs near to midday. The Priests carry his limp form through the pyramid’s entrance.The stone doors of the pyramid groan and then close with a thuDD behind them. Praethos is placed in the centre on a large intricately carved spherical platform, from which an aura of rays, neatly cut into the stone, emanates in all various asymmetric directions. On the rim of platform are the engravings of pictograms and all manner of mysterious symbols.
18

Non-being is still some form of being. Death is change. Life is eternal. Stagnation is disaster. Life can only love through death. Love is Aquamarine.Praethos slowly breathes, paralysed with anticipation; skin curiously tight and dry - the heat somehow cooling its way through his unmoving body. Eyes blink an emerald moment. A twinkle-drop of light at the top-most point of the pyramid appears directly above him, as midday reaches its towering climax. Sharp. A silver-tipped gold light penetrates his sight, skin, skull, his head; and fills his body with lightness, and a warm tingling sound; like air yet lighter; like water, but far smoother; and like laughter, yet loftier.
19

Who am I? What name can call Me Truly? I am a disk of Gold in Heaven - a place in one sense, yet My rays - My touch of light that fades to starlight - it reaches everywhere.I am a speck in a distant galaxy in the skies of innumerable worlds; most of these worlds do not even exist yet. And still, I am an infinite multitude of such specks. Be not troubled. . . Feel the touching of your body, as my finger-tips tickle it to warmth a bit; yet body is permeable. Feel the shape of the air beyond it, , , with touch, , , hear the wind breathe - miles up.See the Galaxy and myriads of scattered stars, , , beings, , , and life-forms beyond your mere imagination.
20

Smell yesterday. . . and then taste the salt of all your ancient yester-years. Loosen your mind free from who and what it is - or not what it is not - be everything, everywhere. Feel the essence that binds us all together - our common core of being, our sacred root.Time is what holds your mind closed.Observe your many lives - our many lifetimes. See your own personal essence when you are dead - know the feeling of dying. Ultimate loss of all that you are and have become.Feel the void of annihilation, and feel not comforted by the immortality of your soul. Know that it survives only as long as time does. For when time runs down to die, then all immortal souls must give up the common thread of their very founding feature.
21

Time does not however have to run in a line; the linear-temporal-perspective is common to human intelligence. It is not wrong to note the linear quality of time, merely that such an observation is only a single one of the numinous facets of time.Through transcending linear time, even the human mind can project beyond its immediate bodily existence - joining into the group mind, the all-pervading-consciousness - the Divine Witness, and finally the ALL which is Being and Void, Ultimate substantial existence and non-being at once.Time is like a river where we can choose which courses to follow, yet we are not completely free to swim anywhen we want. And like a river, it has an end which is no-end because My rays draw the water at its mouth up into clouds and then rain it back to the river. The ever changing cycle is born within its own death.
22

There is no beginning to it, and also no end. We can go up it and down it, though it certainly seems to go in one direction. Each drop never travels the same path twice; each moment is reborn anew for each individual being of moisture.As the source and the destination both make up the river, so our lives are whole. We exist eternally in the past and present, as well as in all the possible courses of our futures.Because the past is the future, all our life is a singularity, though we may choose to live it elsehow. We are united to the world as our bodily space fits the contours of the earth; our being engrains itself like a scar on the surface, leaving its perfect trace of immortal memory, as an eternal part of the Universe. As our body is bound in space and mass - so our minds are bound in time and energy.
23

As the river exists not only at each part of its cycle, so time is united as a whole and cannot be separated into individual lives. Even entire civilisations that live and die are but one bend in the great river of time, all playing their part in achieving the great infinite cycle of life. Because time is more than linear, it does not run completely causally through the ages. The future can cause effects in the present too. Our minds are not confined to the present and thus can cause future probabilities to effect us now.Causality can thus happen backwards.How often has the possibility of future events that may or may not happen, affected our actions in the present?
24

In the life of a temporally conscious being, causality often happens in this backward manner, rather than the simple linear forward causation of inanimate matter. We constantly project into the future, even extracting information from the future’s potential. We also conversely recreate our understanding and experience of the past, during meditative moments.The laws of nature that we use to harness the forces of nature, involve making predictions about the outcome of how natural energy behaves. We can only control that energy if we can predict how it will behave in the future. Our mind is our time-site. Our intelligence is the clarity of that perception.Praethos' mind swirls with the vastness of consciousness that seeps into his being. The perspective of a Deity is truly enormously expansive from the vantage point of a living, dying, body. His own life seems insignificant by comparison.
25

The insides of his being fall apart - his perspective of himself changing. His petty desires and complaints seem so trivial beside the flowing multitudinous enormities of the cosmic river of time.All sense of self as an isolated individual is swept aside before the sudden rush of realisation - of his connectedness to all things, of his being an essential part of the Divine Order. Then the last remnants of his self collect together, and blend into the infinite consciousness, in a place of non-places, a timeless core of being. Where even God is left mortal.
All at once,all being is one.Awareness.Perfection.
26

In this place that I am. . .Universe I Span,more than infinity?My see, , , I-self, , , now:Praethos art I,a speck more than everythingdefined in essence by my own Divine unique limitations.Yet after transcending, all that I am and have experienced, I still remain.And I perceive:At the centre of all: The Absolutes:
27

God and ChaosCreation:Essence and Quantity:Deities, Souls and spirits.Form, substance and change.Life, birth and death,space, time, matter,energycircles,spirals, matrixes,dimensions,extremity.
28

Good and Eviland the pure emotions:AngerLoveFreedomSadnessJoy
Praethos feels his sense of self returning, at the tin-pan of chimed laughter in the belly of his being. And so he looks back, to the centre of the Universe. And further. . . beyond even God/chaos. . . and sees:
29

A knyghte
a princess?
and a Dragon!
Circling them all, and uniting all existence, is the Universal Narrative.
For everything is contained therein.
Even God is but an element of his own narrative destiny.
God is the Dragon, the Knyghte, or the princess. . .
but then is so named the Father, son and Holy Ghost.
God the Powerful, God the Man, and god the unattainable.
30

Praethos turns from the centre of all things, to his own life’s story. All the while seeing it from a meta-temporal perspective. An enormous shade stretches before him, a time-line that winds its way into the future, obscured by clouds, shadows and blackness:The Epic Destiny of his Entire SOUL.His being becomes stretched and distorted as the full impact of pain and horror of his future lives impacts into his awareness. For the first time Praethos discovers pure agony, cutting in its hardened spite. Overwhelmed before even part of his fate is revealed, he withdraws his being into himself; and his mind retreats to the calm dark waters of seductive sleep; and her supple dreams.It is a week before he can sit up and open his eyes, which then become frozen by a realisation that leaves him staring blackly into the eyes of others, as he wonders their role in his fate.
31

He ponders too the destiny of this world as the memory of the distant future laps at the back of his mind. The vision of immense agony, war, spiritual decay, mechanised destruction; brutal annihilation of whole nations. Suffering and loss. Spiritless hard cities of millions. Living in a myopic darkness of mind. Bodies without Souls; unforgiving, unmoving. Unkind.Praethos leaps, then stumbles from the horse-drawn cart that had just brought him back from Tillawanda. This part of the journey had been long and bumpy, and in contrast with the flighted departure in the Airship, very uncomfortable. His yellow robe and crest of the Sun is soiled by a week's travel in the unforgiving wastelands that stretch between Tillawanda and Galgary Vellen.His home town seems drab and small after his journey to seek his fortune. His steps are slow and deliberate as he makes his way up the thousand foot high stone stairway that ascends the Great cliffs which lead to Lake Tigroz at the top.
32

The waterfall tumbles its immortal way down past him, collects in a perpetual roar at the bottom, and disappears into the forest valley. Praethos stands atop the cliffs at last, his breath rising and falling heavily beneath his robe. He looks out into the distance, wondering at all the paths that the Black Horse River might take on its perpetual journey to the sea, and beyond. The Lake is curiously suspended in a neat natural gorge up in the mountains.The waterfall that slides over the cliff-wall, falls below in a perpetual tide. Pondering the all-consciousness of all-being, Praethos wonders if the water that falls over the cliff ever feels the trepidation of the fall - the fear of the plunge into the death of the dark unknown - the thrill of transcending it; the final trepidation. And then, falling anyway.
33

Being the master of one's own fate by choosing to face darkness. Is this the way to freedom? To be able to make a dark decision, knowing it for what it is, yet choosing to do it anyway - purely to prove to oneself the absolute freedom of choice. And our darkest decisions are then made when we feel least free.Is this why the Sun-god has done this? Is this why one can see the mistakes people make before they make them? The frustration of seeing other people's futures, being unable to convince them of the choices they can make. Seeing into the future; even when one does not want to. Like a burdenous vision that cannot be cut off - blinding - deafening - lucidly lunatic in its vivid immanence.“Praethos! Look at you! That look in your eyes - what have they done to you?”. Hilaris's face pierces his vision; her icy pair of luminescent turquoise darting from one part of his sunken form to another; noting his stoop and the dark shadow on his features.
34

Where was the spirited look of youth? The joyous leap of his voice? His smile-eye greeting? “You look an hundred years old!”He smiles slowly: “Hilaris sweet sister of the stars, do not be troubled, they said I have recovered well, I should be fine in a month or two. I need more rest now though.” Then he slept for the first few days; yet it seemed to Hilaris that after three months even, his well-being had not improved. So she consulted with Ranul; an aged woman who had made her living by diving to the depths of the Tigroz in search of the crabs which were a well sort-after delicacy to the inhabitants of Galgary Vellen.It was Ranul who had trained both of them in diving; showing them how to minimise the movements of the body underwater, and therefore conserving energy and oxygen, allowing one to dive for longer periods. How long ago that now seemed.
35

Hilaris tells Ranul that Praethos broods and is uncannily quiet at times - his mind elsewhere. He has become clumsy, his concentration unable to focus on the simplest of tasks.He is often distracted in mid-conversation . . . leaving sentences incomplete as his mind drifts to somewhere else . . . something inside troubles him deeply.Ranul's advice: “Take him to the bottom of the Lake; there he may recover some of his past refreshedness. It seems the Priests have underestimated what their ritual has opened in your brother's mind. I'd be curious to speak to him once he is feeling more talkative. Damn those Priests! They play with life and energy like children - experimenting with power they do not understand. Your brother is time-struck. It seems his mind is no longer localised to this singular life.
36

This is a tactic they use to collect more people to their Priesthood. By letting their minds transcend their singular individuality - their consciousness spreads out to others, allowing immense co-operative action that lets them act as a singular being. Their thoughts are rumoured to be shared by all. Each person acting as a cell in a tightly bound unity - that is only of course if they survive the change to the way their minds become restructured.But something else has happened to your brother - I cannot tell exactly what - but it is very unusual that he has returned here, and stayed so long. It seems a part of his singular identity has survived the transition. This is most unusual - as hanging on to the fundamental sense of an individual self in such a situation normally results in death or madness. Some powerful source within him has allowed him to resist. Yet although Praethos seems deathly - and mad at times - he is still Praethos - is he not? Look at the other Priests, all of them take on new names, or new identities after the transformation. Your brother is indeed transformed - yet into what? I suppose only time will tell.”
37

Hilaris dropped her loose and simple dress on the rocks by the side of the lake and slipped fluidly into the indigo mysteries. Cool caresses ripple the length of her skin, awakening her body with a sudden penetrating chill.Dipping beneath the icy surface, her mind is sharply woken by a numbing freeze, so she surfaces quickly. Winter looms in the foreboding depths as Hilaris looks up. Her eyes of sky adorned by black lashes; sparkling her vision with perfect droplets, lit up by the life of the Sun.Praethos stands high up the natural cliff, about fifty feet up from the Lake; its churning waters stirring slightly and invitingly below him. He remembers the countless times past that he has leapt and penetrated the Lake from here, often perfecting the dive so as to leave only the faintest trace of a splash. Yet he had not so much as touched the surface of its hidden abyss since his return.
38

Hilaris had coaxed and teased to her utmost possible to get him here; and now he stands unmoving. Below him, she dare not say a word in case he backs off - even though she has lost the feeling in her toes from the cold.She dives below once more, kicking furiously to get the blood circulating, burning energy up to lift her body-temperature, as Ranul had taught them.From where he stands, Praethos can feel the cold in his bones, and (the sharp stinging snap of ice) in anticipation of hitting the Lake at the height he must jump. At the sound of water he turns to where Hilaris surfaces again, erupting out high above the surface.Hands lift up a shower of sunlit water-drops; falling back to the Lake in a show of diamond stars - bright with gold and silver trails of cold.
39

She slicks back her dark hair; spread wet across her shoulders, and laughs, looking up to where he stands on rock. His Sun-robe falls to his feet - his body a sharp contrast of white skin, black hair, and dark shadows. The Sun glowers behind him. She moves to a position where his head obscures the blinding gold disk, so that she is no longer sightless in its incessant luminosity. This has the curious effect of giving Praethos's silhouette a golden-white aura. His hair emitting that curious quality of silver and black, reminiscent of the surface of the Airship.Her heart lifts and races, as she sees the shape of his mouth drop open and smile for the first time since his return. Gratuitous stars of laughter escape from his heart as his head rolls back, and the Sun's halo erupts gold and yellow; full in Hilaris's face for a brief blinding moment. She averts her eyes from the sudden flood of sharp light; and when she looks again, he is gone. “Praethos!?...?”
the end

With Intent to Steal

2007-04-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

WITH INTENT TO STEAL
by Algernon Blackwood

To sleep in a lonely barn when the best bedrooms in the house were at
our disposal, seemed, to say the least, unnecessary, and I felt that
some explanation was due to our host.

But Shorthouse, I soon discovered, had seen to all that; our enterprise
would be tolerated, not welcomed, for the master kept this sort of thing
down with a firm hand. And then, how little I could get this man,
Shorthouse, to tell me. There was much I wanted to ask and hear, but he
surrounded himself with impossible barriers. It was ludicrous; he was
surely asking a good deal of me, and yet he would give so little in
return, and his reason--that it was for my good--may have been perfectly
true, but did not bring me any comfort in its train. He gave me sops now
and then, however, to keep up my curiosity, till I soon was aware that
there were growing up side by side within me a genuine interest and an
equally genuine fear; and something of both these is probably necessary
to all real excitement.

The barn in question was some distance from the house, on the side of
the stables, and I had passed it on several of my journeyings to and fro
wondering at its forlorn and untarred appearance under a régime where
everything was so spick and span; but it had never once occurred to me
as possible that I should come to spend a night under its roof with a
comparative stranger, and undergo there an experience belonging to an
order of things I had always rather ridiculed and despised.

At the moment I can only partially recall the process by which
Shorthouse persuaded me to lend him my company. Like myself, he was a
guest in this autumn house-party, and where there were so many to
chatter and to chaff, I think his taciturnity of manner had appealed to
me by contrast, and that I wished to repay something of what I owed.
There was, no doubt, flattery in it as well, for he was more than twice
my age, a man of amazingly wide experience, an explorer of all the
world's corners where danger lurked, and--most subtle flattery of
all--by far the best shot in the whole party, our host included.

At first, however, I held out a bit.

"But surely this story you tell," I said, "has the parentage common to
all such tales--a superstitious heart and an imaginative brain--and has
grown now by frequent repetition into an authentic ghost story? Besides,
this head gardener of half a century ago," I added, seeing that he still
went on cleaning his gun in silence, "who was he, and what positive
information have you about him beyond the fact that he was found hanging
from the rafters, dead?"

"He was no mere head gardener, this man who passed as such," he replied
without looking up, "but a fellow of splendid education who used this
curious disguise for his own purposes. Part of this very barn, of which
he always kept the key, was found to have been fitted up as a complete
laboratory, with athanor, alembic, cucurbite, and other appliances, some
of which the master destroyed at once--perhaps for the best--and which I
have only been able to guess at--"

"Black Arts," I laughed.

"Who knows?" he rejoined quietly. "The man undoubtedly possessed
knowledge--dark knowledge--that was most unusual and dangerous, and I
can discover no means by which he came to it--no ordinary means, that
is. But I _have_ found many facts in the case which point to the
exercise of a most desperate and unscrupulous will; and the strange
disappearances in the neighbourhood, as well as the bones found buried
in the kitchen garden, though never actually traced to him, seem to me
full of dreadful suggestion."

I laughed again, a little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded
one of the story of Giles de Rays, maréchal of France, who was said to
have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one
hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and
who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not
"rise," and only returned to his subject.

"His suicide seems to have been only just in time to escape arrest," he
said.

"A magician of no high order then," I observed sceptically, "if suicide
was his only way of evading the country police."

"The police of London and St. Petersburg rather," returned Shorthouse;
"for the headquarters of this pretty company was somewhere in Russia,
and his apparatus all bore the marks of the most skilful foreign make. A
Russian woman then employed in the household--governess, or
something--vanished, too, about the same time and was never caught. She
was no doubt the cleverest of the lot. And, remember, the object of this
appalling group was not mere vulgar gain, but a kind of knowledge that
called for the highest qualities of courage and intellect in the
seekers."

I admit I was impressed by the man's conviction of voice and manner, for
there is something very compelling in the force of an earnest man's
belief, though I still affected to sneer politely.

"But, like most Black Magicians, the fellow only succeeded in compassing
his own destruction--that of his tools, rather, and of escaping
himself."

"So that he might better accomplish his objects _elsewhere and
otherwise_," said Shorthouse, giving, as he spoke, the most minute
attention to the cleaning of the lock.

"Elsewhere and otherwise," I gasped.

"As if the shell he left hanging from the rafter in the barn in no way
impeded the man's spirit from continuing his dreadful work under new
conditions," he added quietly, without noticing my interruption. "The
idea being that he sometimes revisits the garden and the barn, chiefly
the barn--"

"The barn!" I exclaimed; "for what purpose?"

"Chiefly the barn," he finished, as if he had not heard me, "that is,
when there is anybody in it."

I stared at him without speaking, for there was a wonder in me how he
would add to this.

"When he wants fresh material, that is--he comes to steal from the
living."

"Fresh material!" I repeated aghast. "To steal from the living!" Even
then, in broad daylight, I was foolishly conscious of a creeping
sensation at the roots of my hair, as if a cold breeze were passing over
my skull.

"The strong vitality of the living is what this sort of creature is
supposed to need most," he went on imperturbably, "and where he has
worked and thought and struggled before is the easiest place for him to
get it in. The former conditions are in some way more easily
reconstructed--" He stopped suddenly, and devoted all his attention to
the gun. "It's difficult to explain, you know, rather," he added
presently, "and, besides, it's much better that you should not know till
afterwards."

I made a noise that was the beginning of a score of questions and of as
many sentences, but it got no further than a mere noise, and Shorthouse,
of course, stepped in again.

"Your scepticism," he added, "is one of the qualities that induce me to
ask you to spend the night there with me."

"In those days," he went on, in response to my urging for more
information, "the family were much abroad, and often travelled for years
at a time. This man was invaluable in their absence. His wonderful
knowledge of horticulture kept the gardens--French, Italian, English--in
perfect order. He had carte blanche in the matter of expense, and of
course selected all his own underlings. It was the sudden, unexpected
return of the master that surprised the amazing stories of the
countryside before the fellow, with all his cleverness, had time to
prepare or conceal."

"But is there no evidence, no more recent evidence, to show that
something is likely to happen if we sit up there?" I asked, pressing him
yet further, and I think to his liking, for it showed at least that I
was interested. "Has anything happened there lately, for instance?"

Shorthouse glanced up from the gun he was cleaning so assiduously, and
the smoke from his pipe curled up into an odd twist between me and the
black beard and oriental, sun-tanned face. The magnetism of his look and
expression brought more sense of conviction to me than I had felt
hitherto, and I realised that there had been a sudden little change in
my attitude and that I was now much more inclined to go in for the
adventure with him. At least, I thought, with such a man, one would be
safe in any emergency; for he is determined, resourceful, and to be
depended upon.

"There's the point," he answered slowly; "for there has apparently been
a fresh outburst--an attack almost, it seems,--quite recently. There is
evidence, of course, plenty of it, or I should not feel the interest I
do feel, but--" he hesitated a moment, as though considering how much he
ought to let me know, "but the fact is that three men this summer, on
separate occasions, who have gone into that barn after nightfall, have
been _accosted_--"

"Accosted?" I repeated, betrayed into the interruption by his choice of
so singular a word.

"And one of the stablemen--a recent arrival and quite ignorant of the
story--who had to go in there late one night, saw a dark substance
hanging down from one of the rafters, and when he climbed up, shaking
all over, to cut it down--for he said he felt sure it was a corpse--the
knife passed through nothing but air, and he heard a sound up under the
eaves as if someone were laughing. Yet, while he slashed away, and
afterwards too, the thing went on swinging there before his eyes and
turning slowly with its own weight, like a huge joint on a spit. The man
declares, too, that it had a large bearded face, and that the mouth was
open and drawn down like the mouth of a hanged man."

"Can we question this fellow?"

"He's gone--gave notice at once, but not before I had questioned him
myself very closely."

"Then this was quite recent?" I said, for I knew Shorthouse had not been
in the house more than a week.

"Four days ago," he replied. "But, more than that, only three days ago a
couple of men were in there together in full daylight when one of them
suddenly turned deadly faint. He said that he felt an overmastering
impulse to hang himself; and he looked about for a rope and was furious
when his companion tried to prevent him--"

"But he did prevent him?"

"Just in time, but not before he had clambered on to a beam. He was very
violent."

I had so much to say and ask that I could get nothing out in time, and
Shorthouse went on again.

"I've had a sort of watching brief for this case," he said with a smile,
whose real significance, however, completely escaped me at the time,
"and one of the most disagreeable features about it is the deliberate
way the servants have invented excuses to go out to the place, and
always after dark; some of them who have no right to go there, and no
real occasion at all--have never been there in their lives before
probably--and now all of a sudden have shown the keenest desire and
determination to go out there about dusk, or soon after, and with the
most paltry and foolish excuses in the world. Of course," he added,
"they have been prevented, but the desire, stronger than their
superstitious dread, and which they cannot explain, is very curious."

"Very," I admitted, feeling that my hair was beginning to stand up
again.

"You see," he went on presently, "it all points to volition--in fact to
deliberate arrangement. It is no mere family ghost that goes with every
ivied house in England of a certain age; it is something real, and
something very malignant."

He raised his face from the gun barrel, and for the first time his eye
caught mine in the full. Yes, he was very much in earnest. Also, he knew
a great deal more than he meant to tell.

"It's worth tempting--and fighting, _I_ think," he said; "but I want a
companion with me. Are you game?" His enthusiasm undoubtedly caught me,
but I still wanted to hedge a bit.

"I'm very sceptical," I pleaded.

"All the better," he said, almost as if to himself. "You have the pluck;
I have the knowledge--"

"The knowledge?"

He looked round cautiously as if to make sure that there was no one
within earshot.

"I've been in the place myself," he said in a lowered voice, "quite
lately--in fact only three nights ago--the day the man turned queer."

I stared.

"But--I was obliged to come out--"

Still I stared.

"Quickly," he added significantly.

"You've gone into the thing pretty thoroughly," was all I could find to
say, for I had almost made up my mind to go with him, and was not sure
that I wanted to hear too much beforehand.

He nodded. "It's a bore, of course, but I must do everything
thoroughly--or not at all."

"That's why you clean your own gun, I suppose?"

"That's why, when there's any danger, I take as few chances as
possible," he said, with the same enigmatical smile I had noticed
before; and then he added with emphasis, "And that is also why I ask you
to keep me company now."

Of course, the shaft went straight home, and I gave my promise without
further ado.

Our preparations for the night--a couple of rugs and a flask of black
coffee--were not elaborate, and we found no difficulty, about ten
o'clock, in absenting ourselves from the billiard-room without
attracting curiosity. Shorthouse met me by arrangement under the cedar
on the back lawn, and I at once realised with vividness what a
difference there is between making plans in the daytime and carrying
them out in the dark. One's common-sense--at least in matters of this
sort--is reduced to a minimum, and imagination with all her attendant
sprites usurps the place of judgment. Two and two no longer make
four--they make a mystery, and the mystery loses no time in growing into
a menace. In this particular case, however, my imagination did not find
wings very readily, for I knew that my companion was the most
_unmovable_ of men--an unemotional, solid block of a man who would
never lose his head, and in any conceivable state of affairs would
always take the right as well as the strong course. So my faith in the
man gave me a false courage that was nevertheless very consoling, and I
looked forward to the night's adventure with a genuine appetite.

Side by side, and in silence, we followed the path that skirted the East
Woods, as they were called, and then led across two hay fields, and
through another wood, to the barn, which thus lay about half a mile from
the Lower Farm. To the Lower Farm, indeed, it properly belonged; and
this made us realise more clearly how very ingenious must have been the
excuses of the Hall servants who felt the desire to visit it.

It had been raining during the late afternoon, and the trees were still
dripping heavily on all sides, but the moment we left the second wood
and came out into the open, we saw a clearing with the stars overhead,
against which the barn outlined itself in a black, lugubrious shadow.
Shorthouse led the way--still without a word--and we crawled in through
a low door and seated ourselves in a soft heap of hay in the extreme
corner.

"Now," he said, speaking for the first time, "I'll show you the inside
of the barn, so that you may know where you are, and what to do, in
case anything happens."

A match flared in the darkness, and with the help of two more that
followed I saw the interior of a lofty and somewhat rickety-looking
barn, erected upon a wall of grey stones that ran all round and extended
to a height of perhaps four feet. Above this masonry rose the wooden
sides, running up into the usual vaulted roof, and supported by a double
tier of massive oak rafters, which stretched across from wall to wall
and were intersected by occasional uprights. I felt as if we were inside
the skeleton of some antediluvian monster whose huge black ribs
completely enfolded us. Most of this, of course, only sketched itself to
my eye in the uncertain light of the flickering matches, and when I said
I had seen enough, and the matches went out, we were at once enveloped
in an atmosphere as densely black as anything that I have ever known.
And the silence equalled the darkness.

We made ourselves comfortable and talked in low voices. The rugs, which
were very large, covered our legs; and our shoulders sank into a really
luxurious bed of softness. Yet neither of us apparently felt sleepy. I
certainly didn't, and Shorthouse, dropping his customary brevity that
fell little short of gruffness, plunged into an easy run of talking
that took the form after a time of personal reminiscences. This rapidly
became a vivid narration of adventure and travel in far countries, and
at any other time I should have allowed myself to become completely
absorbed in what he told. But, unfortunately, I was never able for a
single instant to forget the real purpose of our enterprise, and
consequently I felt all my senses more keenly on the alert than usual,
and my attention accordingly more or less distracted. It was, indeed, a
revelation to hear Shorthouse unbosom himself in this fashion, and to a
young man it was of course doubly fascinating; but the little sounds
that always punctuate even the deepest silence out of doors claimed some
portion of my attention, and as the night grew on I soon became aware
that his tales seemed somewhat disconnected and abrupt--and that, in
fact, I heard really only part of them.

It was not so much that I actually heard other sounds, but that I
_expected_ to hear them; this was what stole the other half of my
listening. There was neither wind nor rain to break the stillness, and
certainly there were no physical presences in our neighbourhood, for we
were half a mile even from the Lower Farm; and from the Hall and
stables, at least a mile. Yet the stillness was being continually
broken--perhaps _disturbed_ is a better word--and it was to these very
remote and tiny disturbances that I felt compelled to devote at least
half my listening faculties.

From time to time, however, I made a remark or asked a question, to show
that I was listening and interested; but, in a sense, my questions
always seemed to bear in one direction and to make for one issue,
namely, my companion's previous experience in the barn when he had been
obliged to come out "quickly."

Apparently I could not help myself in the matter, for this was really
the one consuming curiosity I had; and the fact that it was better for
me not to know it made me the keener to know it all, even the worst.

Shorthouse realised this even better than I did. I could tell it by the
way he dodged, or wholly ignored, my questions, and this subtle sympathy
between us showed plainly enough, had I been able at the time to reflect
upon its meaning, that the nerves of both of us were in a very sensitive
and highly-strung condition. Probably, the complete confidence I felt in
his ability to face whatever might happen, and the extent to which also
I relied upon him for my own courage, prevented the exercise of my
ordinary powers of reflection, while it left my senses free to a more
than usual degree of activity.

Things must have gone on in this way for a good hour or more, when I
made the sudden discovery that there was something unusual in the
conditions of our environment. This sounds a roundabout mode of
expression, but I really know not how else to put it. The discovery
almost rushed upon me. By rights, we were two men waiting in an alleged
haunted barn for something to happen; and, as two men who trusted one
another implicitly (though for very different reasons), there should
have been two minds keenly alert, with the ordinary senses in active
co-operation. Some slight degree of nervousness, too, there might also
have been, but beyond this, nothing. It was therefore with something of
dismay that I made the sudden discovery that there _was_ something more,
and something that I ought to have noticed very much sooner than I
actually did notice it.

The fact was--Shorthouse's stream of talk was wholly unnatural. He was
talking with a purpose. He did not wish to be cornered by my questions,
true, but he had another and a deeper purpose still, and it grew upon
me, as an unpleasant deduction from my discovery, that this strong,
cynical, unemotional man by my side was talking--and had been talking
all this time--to gain a particular end. And this end, I soon felt
clearly, was to _convince himself_. But, of what?

For myself, as the hours wore on towards midnight, I was not anxious to
find the answer; but in the end it became impossible to avoid it, and I
knew as I listened, that he was pouring forth this steady stream of
vivid reminiscences of travel--South Seas, big game, Russian
exploration, women, adventures of all sorts--_because he wished the past
to reassert itself to the complete exclusion of the present_. He was
taking his precautions. He was afraid.

I felt a hundred things, once this was clear to me, but none of them
more than the wish to get up at once and leave the barn. If Shorthouse
was afraid already, what in the world was to happen to me in the long
hours that lay ahead? . . . I only know that, in my fierce efforts to deny
to myself the evidence of his partial collapse, the strength came that
enabled me to play my part properly, and I even found myself helping
him by means of animated remarks upon his stories, and by more or less
judicious questions. I also helped him by dismissing from my mind any
desire to enquire into the truth of his former experience; and it was
good I did so, for had he turned it loose on me, with those great powers
of convincing description that he had at his command, I verily believe
that I should never have crawled from that barn alive. So, at least, I
felt at the moment. It was the instinct of self-preservation, and it
brought sound judgment.

Here, then, at least, with different motives, reached, too, by opposite
ways, we were both agreed upon one thing, namely, that temporarily we
would forget. Fools we were, for a dominant emotion is not so easily
banished, and we were for ever recurring to it in a hundred ways direct
and indirect. A real fear cannot be so easily trifled with, and while we
toyed on the surface with thousands and thousands of words--mere
words--our sub-conscious activities were steadily gaining force, and
would before very long have to be properly acknowledged. We could not
get away from it. At last, when he had finished the recital of an
adventure which brought him near enough to a horrible death, I admitted
that in my uneventful life I had never yet been face to face with a
real fear. It slipped out inadvertently, and, of course, without
intention, but the tendency in him at the time was too strong to be
resisted. He saw the loophole, and made for it full tilt.

"It is the same with all the emotions," he said. "The experiences of
others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately
turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years,
he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.
Imaginative authors may write, moralists may preach, and scholars may
criticise, but they are dealing all the time in a coinage of which they
know not the actual value. Their listener gets a sensation--but not the
true one. Until you have faced these emotions," he went on, with the
same race of words that had come from him the whole evening, "and made
them your own, your slaves, you have no idea of the power that is in
them--hunger, that shows lights beckoning beyond the grave; thirst, that
fills with mingled ice and fire; passion, love, loneliness, revenge,
and--" He paused for a minute, and though I knew we were on the brink I
was powerless to hold him. " . . . _and fear_," he went on--"fear . . .
I think that death from fear, or madness from fear, must sum up in a
second of time the total of all the most awful sensations it is possible
for a man to know."

"Then you have yourself felt something of this fear," I interrupted;
"for you said just now--"

"I do not mean physical fear," he replied; "for that is more or less a
question of nerves and will, and it is imagination that makes men
cowards. I mean an _absolute_ fear, a physical fear one might call it,
that reaches the soul and withers every power one possesses."

He said a lot more, for he, too, was wholly unable to stem the torrent
once it broke loose; but I have forgotten it; or, rather, mercifully I
did not hear it, for I stopped my ears and only heard the occasional
words when I took my fingers out to find if he had come to an end. In
due course he did come to an end, and there we left it, for I then knew
positively what he already knew: that somewhere here in the night, and
within the walls of this very barn where we were sitting, there was
waiting Something of dreadful malignancy and of great power. Something
that we might both have to face ere morning, and Something that he had
already tried to face once and failed in the attempt.

The night wore slowly on; and it gradually became more and more clear to
me that I could not dare to rely as at first upon my companion, and that
our positions were undergoing a slow process of reversal. I thank Heaven
this was not borne in upon me too suddenly; and that I had at least the
time to readjust myself somewhat to the new conditions. Preparation was
possible, even if it was not much, and I sought by every means in my
power to gather up all the shreds of my courage, so that they might
together make a decent rope that would stand the strain when it came.
The strain would come, that was certain, and I was thoroughly well
aware--though for my life I cannot put into words the reasons for my
knowledge--that the massing of the material against us was proceeding
somewhere in the darkness with determination and a horrible skill
besides.

Shorthouse meanwhile talked without ceasing. The great quantity of hay
opposite--or straw, I believe it actually was--seemed to deaden the
sound of his voice, but the silence, too, had become so oppressive that
I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop. I
heard, too, the gentle ticking of my watch. Each second uttered its
voice and dropped away into a gulf, as if starting on a journey whence
there was no return. Once a dog barked somewhere in the distance,
probably on the Lower Farm; and once an owl hooted close outside and I
could hear the swishing of its wings as it passed overhead. Above me, in
the darkness, I could just make out the outline of the barn, sinister
and black, the rows of rafters stretching across from wall to wall like
wicked arms that pressed upon the hay. Shorthouse, deep in some involved
yarn of the South Seas that was meant to be full of cheer and sunshine,
and yet only succeeded in making a ghastly mixture of unnatural
colouring, seemed to care little whether I listened or not. He made no
appeal to me, and I made one or two quite irrelevant remarks which
passed him by and proved that he was merely uttering sounds. He, too,
was afraid of the silence.

I fell to wondering how long a man could talk without stopping. . . . Then
it seemed to me that these words of his went falling into the same gulf
where the seconds dropped, only they were heavier and fell faster. I
began to chase them. Presently one of them fell much faster than the
rest, and I pursued it and found myself almost immediately in a land of
clouds and shadows. They rose up and enveloped me, pressing on the
eyelids. . . . It must have been just here that I actually fell asleep,
somewhere between twelve and one o'clock, because, as I chased this word
at tremendous speed through space, I knew that I had left the other
words far, very far behind me, till, at last, I could no longer hear
them at all. The voice of the story-teller was beyond the reach of
hearing; and I was falling with ever increasing rapidity through an
immense void.

A sound of whispering roused me. Two persons were talking under their
breath close beside me. The words in the main escaped me, but I caught
every now and then bitten-off phrases and half sentences, to which,
however, I could attach no intelligible meaning. The words were quite
close--at my very side in fact--and one of the voices sounded so
familiar, that curiosity overcame dread, and I turned to look. I was not
mistaken; _it was Shorthouse whispering_. But the other person, who must
have been just a little beyond him, was lost in the darkness and
invisible to me. It seemed then that Shorthouse at once turned up his
face and looked at me and, by some means or other that caused me no
surprise at the time, I easily made out the features in the darkness.
They wore an expression I had never seen there before; he seemed
distressed, exhausted, worn out, and as though he were about to give in
after a long mental struggle. He looked at me, almost beseechingly, and
the whispering of the other person died away.

"They're at me," he said.

I found it quite impossible to answer; the words stuck in my throat. His
voice was thin, plaintive, almost like a child's.

"I shall have to go. I'm not as strong as I thought. They'll call it
suicide, but, of course, it's really murder." There was real anguish in
his voice, and it terrified me.

A deep silence followed these extraordinary words, and I somehow
understood that the Other Person was just going to carry on the
conversation--I even fancied I saw lips shaping themselves just over my
friend's shoulder--when I felt a sharp blow in the ribs and a voice,
this time a deep voice, sounded in my ear. I opened my eyes, and the
wretched dream vanished. Yet it left behind it an impression of a strong
and quite unusual reality.

"_Do_ try not to go to sleep again," he said sternly. "You seem
exhausted. Do you feel so?" There was a note in his voice I did not
welcome,--less than alarm, but certainly more than mere solicitude.

"I do feel terribly sleepy all of a sudden," I admitted, ashamed.

"So you may," he added very earnestly; "but I rely on you to keep awake,
if only to watch. You have been asleep for half an hour at least--and
you were so still--I thought I'd wake you--"

"Why?" I asked, for my curiosity and nervousness were altogether too
strong to be resisted. "Do you think we are in danger?"

"I think _they_ are about here now. I feel my vitality going
rapidly--that's always the first sign. You'll last longer than I,
remember. Watch carefully."

The conversation dropped. I was afraid to say all I wanted to say. It
would have been too unmistakably a confession; and intuitively I
realised the danger of admitting the existence of certain emotions until
positively forced to. But presently Shorthouse began again. His voice
sounded odd, and as if it had lost power. It was more like a woman's or
a boy's voice than a man's, and recalled the voice in my dream.

"I suppose you've got a knife?" he asked.

"Yes--a big clasp knife; but why?" He made no answer. "You don't think a
practical joke likely? No one suspects we're here," I went on. Nothing
was more significant of our real feelings this night than the way we
toyed with words, and never dared more than to skirt the things in our
mind.

"It's just as well to be prepared," he answered evasively. "Better be
quite sure. See which pocket it's in--so as to be ready."

I obeyed mechanically, and told him. But even this scrap of talk proved
to me that he was getting further from me all the time in his mind. He
was following a line that was strange to me, and, as he distanced me, I
felt that the sympathy between us grew more and more strained. _He knew
more_; it was not that I minded so much--but that he was willing to
_communicate less_. And in proportion as I lost his support, I dreaded
his increasing silence. Not of words--for he talked more volubly than
ever, and with a fiercer purpose--but his silence in giving no hint of
what he must have known to be really going on the whole time.

The night was perfectly still. Shorthouse continued steadily talking,
and I jogged him now and again with remarks or questions in order to
keep awake. He paid no attention, however, to either.

About two in the morning a short shower fell, and the drops rattled
sharply on the roof like shot. I was glad when it stopped, for it
completely drowned all other sounds and made it impossible to hear
anything else that might be going on. Something _was_ going on, too, all
the time, though for the life of me I could not say what. The outer
world had grown quite dim--the house-party, the shooters, the
billiard-room, and the ordinary daily incidents of my visit. All my
energies were concentrated on the present, and the constant strain of
watching, waiting, listening, was excessively telling.

Shorthouse still talked of his adventures, in some Eastern country now,
and less connectedly. These adventures, real or imaginary, had quite a
savour of the Arabian Nights, and did not by any means make it easier
for me to keep my hold on reality. The lightest weight will affect the
balance under such circumstances, and in this case the weight of his
talk was on the wrong scale. His words were very rapid, and I found it
overwhelmingly difficult not to follow them into that great gulf of
darkness where they all rushed and vanished. But that, I knew, meant
sleep again. Yet, it was strange I should feel sleepy when at the same
time all my nerves were fairly tingling. Every time I heard what seemed
like a step outside, or a movement in the hay opposite, the blood stood
still for a moment in my veins. Doubtless, the unremitting strain told
upon me more than I realised, and this was doubly great now that I knew
Shorthouse was a source of weakness instead of strength, as I had
counted. Certainly, a curious sense of languor grew upon me more and
more, and I was sure that the man beside me was engaged in the same
struggle. The feverishness of his talk proved this, if nothing else. It
was dreadfully hard to keep awake.

But this time, instead of dropping into the gulf, I saw something come
up out of it! It reached our world by a door in the side of the barn
furthest from me, and it came in cautiously and silently and moved into
the mass of hay opposite. There, for a moment, I lost it, but presently
I caught it again higher up. It was clinging, like a great bat, to the
side of the barn. Something trailed behind it, I could not make out
what. . . . It crawled up the wooden wall and began to move out along one
of the rafters. A numb terror settled down all over me as I watched it.
The thing trailing behind it was apparently a rope.

The whispering began again just then, but the only words I could catch
seemed without meaning; it was almost like another language. The voices
were above me, under the roof. Suddenly I saw signs of active movement
going on just beyond the place where the thing lay upon the rafter.
There was something else up there with it! Then followed panting, like
the quick breathing that accompanies effort, and the next minute a black
mass dropped through the air and dangled at the end of the rope.

Instantly, it all flashed upon me. I sprang to my feet and rushed
headlong across the floor of the barn. How I moved so quickly in the
darkness I do not know; but, even as I ran, it flashed into my mind that
I should never get at my knife in time to cut the thing down, or else
that I should find it had been taken from me. Somehow or other--the
Goddess of Dreams knows how--I climbed up by the hay bales and swung out
along the rafter. I was hanging, of course, by my arms, and the knife
was already between my teeth, though I had no recollection of how it got
there. It was open. The mass, hanging like a side of bacon, was only a
few feet in front of me, and I could plainly see the dark line of rope
that fastened it to the beam. I then noticed for the first time that it
was swinging and turning in the air, and that as I approached it seemed
to move along the beam, so that the same distance was always maintained
between us. The only thing I could do--for there was no time to
hesitate--was to jump at it through the air and slash at the rope as I
dropped.

I seized the knife with my right hand, gave a great swing of my body
with my legs and leaped forward at it through the air. Horrors! It was
closer to me than I knew, and I plunged full into it, and the arm with
the knife missed the rope and cut deeply into some substance that was
soft and yielding. But, as I dropped past it, the thing had time to turn
half its width so that it swung round and faced me--and I could have
sworn as I rushed past it through the air, that it had the features of
Shorthouse.

The shock of this brought the vile nightmare to an abrupt end, and I
woke up a second time on the soft hay-bed to find that the grey dawn was
stealing in, and that I was exceedingly cold. After all I had failed to
keep awake, and my sleep, since it was growing light, must have lasted
at least an hour. A whole hour off my guard!

There was no sound from Shorthouse, to whom, of course, my first
thoughts turned; probably his flow of words had ceased long ago, and he
too had yielded to the persuasions of the seductive god. I turned to
wake him and get the comfort of companionship for the horror of my
dream, when to my utter dismay I saw that the place where he had been
was vacant. He was no longer beside me.

It had been no little shock before to discover that the ally in whom lay
all my faith and dependence was really frightened, but it is quite
impossible to describe the sensations I experienced when I realised he
had gone altogether and that I was alone in the barn. For a minute or
two my head swam and I felt a prey to a helpless terror. The dream, too,
still seemed half real, so vivid had it been! I was thoroughly
frightened--hot and cold by turns--and I clutched the hay at my side in
handfuls, and for some moments had no idea in the world what I should
do.

This time, at least, I was unmistakably awake, and I made a great effort
to collect myself and face the meaning of the disappearance of my
companion. In this I succeeded so far that I decided upon a thorough
search of the barn, inside and outside. It was a dreadful undertaking,
and I did not feel at all sure of being able to bring it to a
conclusion, but I knew pretty well that unless something was done at
once, I should simply collapse.

But, when I tried to move, I found that the cold, and fear, and I know
not what else unholy besides, combined to make it almost impossible. I
suddenly realised that a tour of inspection, during the whole of which
my back would be open to attack, was not to be thought of. My will was
not equal to it. Anything might spring upon me any moment from the dark
corners, and the growing light was just enough to reveal every movement
I made to any who might be watching. For, even then, and while I was
still half dazed and stupid, I knew perfectly well that someone was
watching me all the time with the utmost intentness. I had not merely
awakened; I had _been_ awakened.

I decided to try another plan; I called to him. My voice had a thin weak
sound, far away and quite unreal, and there was no answer to it. Hark,
though! There was something that might have been a very faint voice near
me!

I called again, this time with greater distinctness, "Shorthouse, where
are you? can you hear me?"

There certainly was a sound, but it was not a voice. Something was
moving. It was someone shuffling along, and it seemed to be outside the
barn. I was afraid to call again, and the sound continued. It was an
ordinary sound enough, no doubt, but it came to me just then as
something unusual and unpleasant. Ordinary sounds remain ordinary only
so long as one is not listening to them; under the influence of intense
listening they become unusual, portentous, and therefore extraordinary.
So, this common sound came to me as something uncommon, disagreeable. It
conveyed, too, an impression of stealth. And with it there was another,
a slighter sound.

Just at this minute the wind bore faintly over the field the sound of
the stable clock, a mile away. It was three o'clock; the hour when
life's pulses beat lowest; when poor souls lying between life and death
find it hardest to resist. Vividly I remember this thought crashing
through my brain with a sound of thunder, and I realised that the strain
on my nerves was nearing the limit, and that something would have to be
done at once if I was to reclaim my self-control at all.

When thinking over afterwards the events of this dreadful night, it has
always seemed strange to me that my second nightmare, so vivid in its
terror and its nearness, should have furnished me with no inkling of
what was really going on all this while; and that I should not have been
able to put two and two together, or have discovered sooner than I did
_what_ this sound was and _where_ it came from. I can well believe that
the vile scheming which lay behind the whole experience found it an easy
trifle to direct my hearing amiss; though, of course, it may equally
well have been due to the confused condition of my mind at the time and
to the general nervous tension under which I was undoubtedly suffering.

But, whatever the cause for my stupidity at first in failing to trace
the sound to its proper source, I can only say here that it was with a
shock of unexampled horror that my eye suddenly glanced upwards and
caught sight of the figure moving in the shadows above my head among the
rafters. Up to this moment I had thought that it was somebody outside
the barn, crawling round the walls till it came to a door; and the rush
of horror that froze my heart when I looked up and saw that it was
Shorthouse creeping stealthily along a beam, is something altogether
beyond the power of words to describe.

He was staring intently down upon me, and I knew at once that it was he
who had been watching me.

This point was, I think, for me the climax of feeling in the whole
experience; I was incapable of any further sensation--that is any
further sensation in the same direction. But here the abominable
character of the affair showed itself most plainly, for it suddenly
presented an entirely new aspect to me. The light fell on the picture
from a new angle, and galvanised me into a fresh ability to feel when I
thought a merciful numbness had supervened. It may not sound a great
deal in the printed letter, but it came to me almost as if it had been
an extension of consciousness, for the Hand that held the pencil
suddenly touched in with ghastly effect of contrast the element of the
ludicrous. Nothing could have been worse just then. Shorthouse, the
masterful spirit, so intrepid in the affairs of ordinary life, whose
power increased rather than lessened in the face of danger--this man,
creeping on hands and knees along a rafter in a barn at three o'clock in
the morning, watching me all the time as a cat watches a mouse! Yes, it
was distinctly ludicrous, and while it gave me a measure with which to
gauge the dread emotion that caused his aberration, it stirred
somewhere deep in my interior the strings of an empty laughter.

One of those moments then came to me that are said to come sometimes
under the stress of great emotion, when in an instant the mind grows
dazzlingly clear. An abnormal lucidity took the place of my confusion of
thought, and I suddenly understood that the two dreams which I had taken
for nightmares must really have been sent me, and that I had been
allowed for one moment to look over the edge of what was to come; the
Good was helping, even when the Evil was most determined to destroy.

I saw it all clearly now. Shorthouse had overrated his strength. The
terror inspired by his first visit to the barn (when he had failed) had
roused the man's whole nature to win, and he had brought me to divert
the deadly stream of evil. That he had again underrated the power
against him was apparent as soon as he entered the barn, and his wild
talk, and refusal to admit what he felt, were due to this desire not to
acknowledge the insidious fear that was growing in his heart. But, at
length, it had become too strong. He had left my side in my sleep--had
been overcome himself, perhaps, first in _his_ sleep, by the dreadful
impulse. He knew that I should interfere, and with every movement he
made, he watched me steadily, for the mania was upon him and he was
_determined to hang himself_. He pretended not to hear me calling, and I
knew that anything coming between him and his purpose would meet the
full force of his fury--the fury of a maniac, of one, for the time
being, truly possessed.

For a minute or two I sat there and stared. I saw then for the first
time that there was a bit of rope trailing after him, and that this was
what made the rustling sound I had noticed. Shorthouse, too, had come to
a stop. His body lay along the rafter like a crouching animal. He was
looking hard at me. That whitish patch was his face.

I can lay claim to no courage in the matter, for I must confess that in
one sense I was frightened almost beyond control. But at the same time
the necessity for decided action, if I was to save his life, came to me
with an intense relief. No matter what animated him for the moment,
Shorthouse was only a _man_; it was flesh and blood I had to contend
with and not the intangible powers. Only a few hours before I had seen
him cleaning his gun, smoking his pipe, knocking the billiard balls
about with very human clumsiness, and the picture flashed across my
mind with the most wholesome effect.

Then I dashed across the floor of the barn and leaped upon the hay bales
as a preliminary to climbing up the sides to the first rafter. It was
far more difficult than in my dream. Twice I slipped back into the hay,
and as I scrambled up for the third time I saw that Shorthouse, who thus
far had made no sound or movement, was now busily doing something with
his hands upon the beam. He was at its further end, and there must have
been fully fifteen feet between us. Yet I saw plainly what he was doing;
he was fastening the rope to the rafter. _The other end, I saw, was
already round his neck!_

This gave me at once the necessary strength, and in a second I had swung
myself on to a beam, crying aloud with all the authority I could put
into my voice--

"You fool, man! What in the world are you trying to do? Come down at
once!"

My energetic actions and words combined had an immediate effect upon him
for which I blessed Heaven; for he looked up from his horrid task,
stared hard at me for a second or two, and then came wriggling along
like a great cat to intercept me. He came by a series of leaps and
bounds and at an astonishing pace, and the way he moved somehow inspired
me with a fresh horror, for it did not seem the natural movement of a
human being at all, but more, as I have said, like that of some lithe
wild animal.

He was close upon me. I had no clear idea of what exactly I meant to do.
I could see his face plainly now; he was grinning cruelly; the eyes were
positively luminous, and the menacing expression of the mouth was most
distressing to look upon. Otherwise it was the face of a chalk man,
white and dead, with all the semblance of the living human drawn out of
it. Between his teeth he held my clasp knife, which he must have taken
from me in my sleep, and with a flash I recalled his anxiety to know
exactly which pocket it was in.

"Drop that knife!" I shouted at him, "and drop after it yourself--"

"Don't you dare to stop me!" he hissed, the breath coming between his
lips across the knife that he held in his teeth. "Nothing in the world
can stop me now--I have promised--and I must do it. I can't hold out any
longer."

"Then drop the knife and I'll help you," I shouted back in his face. "I
promise--"

"No use," he cried, laughing a little, "I must do it and you can't stop
me."

I heard a sound of laughter, too, somewhere in the air behind me. The
next second Shorthouse came at me with a single bound.

To this day I cannot quite tell how it happened. It is still a wild
confusion and a fever of horror in my mind, but from somewhere I drew
more than my usual allowance of strength, and before he could well have
realised what I meant to do, I had his throat between my fingers. He
opened his teeth and the knife dropped at once, for I gave him a squeeze
he need never forget. Before, my muscles had felt like so much soaked
paper; now they recovered their natural strength, and more besides. I
managed to work ourselves along the rafter until the hay was beneath us,
and then, completely exhausted, I let go my hold and we swung round
together and dropped on to the hay, he clawing at me in the air even as
we fell.

The struggle that began by my fighting for his life ended in a wild
effort to save my own, for Shorthouse was quite beside himself, and had
no idea what he was doing. Indeed, he has always averred that he
remembers nothing of the entire night's experiences after the time when
he first woke me from sleep. A sort of deadly mist settled over him, he
declares, and he lost all sense of his own identity. The rest was a
blank until he came to his senses under a mass of hay with me on the top
of him.

It was the hay that saved us, first by breaking the fall and then by
impeding his movements so that I was able to prevent his choking me to
death.

Keeping His Promise

2007-04-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

KEEPING HIS PROMISE
by Algernon Blackwood

It was eleven o'clock at night, and young Marriott was locked into his
room, cramming as hard as he could cram. He was a "Fourth Year Man" at
Edinburgh University and he had been ploughed for this particular
examination so often that his parents had positively declared they could
no longer supply the funds to keep him there.

His rooms were cheap and dingy, but it was the lecture fees that took
the money. So Marriott pulled himself together at last and definitely
made up his mind that he would pass or die in the attempt, and for some
weeks now he had been reading as hard as mortal man can read. He was
trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed
conclusively he did not understand the value of either. For no ordinary
man--and Marriott was in every sense an ordinary man--can afford to
drive the mind as he had lately been driving his, without sooner or
later paying the cost.

Among the students he had few friends or acquaintances, and these few
had promised not to disturb him at night, knowing he was at last reading
in earnest. It was, therefore, with feelings a good deal stronger than
mere surprise that he heard his door-bell ring on this particular night
and realised that he was to have a visitor. Some men would simply have
muffled the bell and gone on quietly with their work. But Marriott was
not this sort. He was nervous. It would have bothered and pecked at his
mind all night long not to know who the visitor was and what he wanted.
The only thing to do, therefore, was to let him in--and out again--as
quickly as possible.

The landlady went to bed at ten o'clock punctually, after which hour
nothing would induce her to pretend she heard the bell, so Marriott
jumped up from his books with an exclamation that augured ill for the
reception of his caller, and prepared to let him in with his own hand.

The streets of Edinburgh town were very still at this late hour--it was
late for Edinburgh--and in the quiet neighbourhood of F---- Street,
where Marriott lived on the third floor, scarcely a sound broke the
silence. As he crossed the floor, the bell rang a second time, with
unnecessary clamour, and he unlocked the door and passed into the
little hallway with considerable wrath and annoyance in his heart at the
insolence of the double interruption.

"The fellows all know I'm reading for this exam. Why in the world do
they come to bother me at such an unearthly hour?"

The inhabitants of the building, with himself, were medical students,
general students, poor Writers to the Signet, and some others whose
vocations were perhaps not so obvious. The stone staircase, dimly
lighted at each floor by a gas-jet that would not turn above a certain
height, wound down to the level of the street with no pretence at carpet
or railing. At some levels it was cleaner than at others. It depended on
the landlady of the particular level.

The acoustic properties of a spiral staircase seem to be peculiar.
Marriott, standing by the open door, book in hand, thought every moment
the owner of the footsteps would come into view. The sound of the boots
was so close and so loud that they seemed to travel disproportionately
in advance of their cause. Wondering who it could be, he stood ready
with all manner of sharp greetings for the man who dared thus to disturb
his work. But the man did not appear. The steps sounded almost under
his nose, yet no one was visible.

A sudden queer sensation of fear passed over him--a faintness and a
shiver down the back. It went, however, almost as soon as it came, and
he was just debating whether he would call aloud to his invisible
visitor, or slam the door and return to his books, when the cause of the
disturbance turned the corner very slowly and came into view.

It was a stranger. He saw a youngish man short of figure and very broad.
His face was the colour of a piece of chalk and the eyes, which were
very bright, had heavy lines underneath them. Though the cheeks and chin
were unshaven and the general appearance unkempt, the man was evidently
a gentleman, for he was well dressed and bore himself with a certain
air. But, strangest of all, he wore no hat, and carried none in his
hand; and although rain had been falling steadily all the evening, he
appeared to have neither overcoat nor umbrella.

A hundred questions sprang up in Marriott's mind and rushed to his lips,
chief among which was something like "Who in the world are you?" and
"What in the name of heaven do you come to me for?" But none of these
questions found time to express themselves in words, for almost at once
the caller turned his head a little so that the gas light in the hall
fell upon his features from a new angle. Then in a flash Marriott
recognised him.

"Field! Man alive! Is it you?" he gasped.

The Fourth Year Man was not lacking in intuition, and he perceived at
once that here was a case for delicate treatment. He divined, without
any actual process of thought, that the catastrophe often predicted had
come at last, and that this man's father had turned him out of the
house. They had been at a private school together years before, and
though they had hardly met once since, the news had not failed to reach
him from time to time with considerable detail, for the family lived
near his own and between certain of the sisters there was great
intimacy. Young Field had gone wild later, he remembered hearing about
it all--drink, a woman, opium, or something of the sort--he could not
exactly call to mind.

"Come in," he said at once, his anger vanishing. "There's been something
wrong, I can see. Come in, and tell me all about it and perhaps I can
help--" He hardly knew what to say, and stammered a lot more besides.
The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that
lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.
But he had a man's heart for all that.

He led the way across the hall, shutting the front door carefully behind
him, and noticed as he did so that the other, though certainly sober,
was unsteady on his legs, and evidently much exhausted. Marriott might
not be able to pass his examinations, but he at least knew the symptoms
of starvation--acute starvation, unless he was much mistaken--when they
stared him in the face.

"Come along," he said cheerfully, and with genuine sympathy in his
voice. "I'm glad to see you. I was going to have a bite of something to
eat, and you're just in time to join me."

The other made no audible reply, and shuffled so feebly with his feet
that Marriott took his arm by way of support. He noticed for the first
time that the clothes hung on him with pitiful looseness. The broad
frame was literally hardly more than a frame. He was as thin as a
skeleton. But, as he touched him, the sensation of faintness and dread
returned. It only lasted a moment, and then passed off, and he ascribed
it not unnaturally to the distress and shock of seeing a former friend
in such a pitiful plight.

"Better let me guide you. It's shamefully dark--this hall. I'm always
complaining," he said lightly, recognising by the weight upon his arm
that the guidance was sorely needed, "but the old cat never does
anything except promise." He led him to the sofa, wondering all the time
where he had come from and how he had found out the address. It must be
at least seven years since those days at the private school when they
used to be such close friends.

"Now, if you'll forgive me for a minute," he said, "I'll get supper
ready--such as it is. And don't bother to talk. Just take it easy on the
sofa. I see you're dead tired. You can tell me about it afterwards, and
we'll make plans."

The other sat down on the edge of the sofa and stared in silence, while
Marriott got out the brown loaf, scones, and huge pot of marmalade that
Edinburgh students always keep in their cupboards. His eyes shone with a
brightness that suggested drugs, Marriott thought, stealing a glance at
him from behind the cupboard door. He did not like yet to take a full
square look. The fellow was in a bad way, and it would have been so like
an examination to stare and wait for explanations. Besides, he was
evidently almost too exhausted to speak. So, for reasons of
delicacy--and for another reason as well which he could not exactly
formulate to himself--he let his visitor rest apparently unnoticed,
while he busied himself with the supper. He lit the spirit lamp to make
cocoa, and when the water was boiling he drew up the table with the good
things to the sofa, so that Field need not have even the trouble of
moving to a chair.

"Now, let's tuck in," he said, "and afterwards we'll have a pipe and a
chat. I'm reading for an exam, you know, and I always have something
about this time. It's jolly to have a companion."

He looked up and caught his guest's eyes directed straight upon his own.
An involuntary shudder ran through him from head to foot. The face
opposite him was deadly white and wore a dreadful expression of pain and
mental suffering.

"By Gad!" he said, jumping up, "I quite forgot. I've got some whisky
somewhere. What an ass I am. I never touch it myself when I'm working
like this."

He went to the cupboard and poured out a stiff glass which the other
swallowed at a single gulp and without any water. Marriott watched him
while he drank it, and at the same time noticed something else as
well--Field's coat was all over dust, and on one shoulder was a bit of
cobweb. It was perfectly dry; Field arrived on a soaking wet night
without hat, umbrella, or overcoat, and yet perfectly dry, even dusty.
Therefore he had been under cover. What did it all mean? Had he been
hiding in the building? . . .

It was very strange. Yet he volunteered nothing; and Marriott had pretty
well made up his mind by this time that he would not ask any questions
until he had eaten and slept. Food and sleep were obviously what the
poor devil needed most and first--he was pleased with his powers of
ready diagnosis--and it would not be fair to press him till he had
recovered a bit.

They ate their supper together while the host carried on a running
one-sided conversation, chiefly about himself and his exams and his "old
cat" of a landlady, so that the guest need not utter a single word
unless he really wished to--which he evidently did not! But, while he
toyed with his food, feeling no desire to eat, the other ate
voraciously. To see a hungry man devour cold scones, stale oatcake, and
brown bread laden with marmalade was a revelation to this inexperienced
student who had never known what it was to be without at least three
meals a day. He watched in spite of himself, wondering why the fellow
did not choke in the process.

But Field seemed to be as sleepy as he was hungry. More than once his
head dropped and he ceased to masticate the food in his mouth. Marriott
had positively to shake him before he would go on with his meal. A
stronger emotion will overcome a weaker, but this struggle between the
sting of real hunger and the magical opiate of overpowering sleep was a
curious sight to the student, who watched it with mingled astonishment
and alarm. He had heard of the pleasure it was to feed hungry men, and
watch them eat, but he had never actually witnessed it, and he had no
idea it was like this. Field ate like an animal--gobbled, stuffed,
gorged. Marriott forgot his reading, and began to feel something very
much like a lump in his throat.

"Afraid there's been awfully little to offer you, old man," he managed
to blurt out when at length the last scone had disappeared, and the
rapid, one-sided meal was at an end. Field still made no reply, for he
was almost asleep in his seat. He merely looked up wearily and
gratefully.

"Now you must have some sleep, you know," he continued, "or you'll go to
pieces. I shall be up all night reading for this blessed exam. You're
more than welcome to my bed. To-morrow we'll have a late breakfast
and--and see what can be done--and make plans--I'm awfully good at
making plans, you know," he added with an attempt at lightness.

Field maintained his "dead sleepy" silence, but appeared to acquiesce,
and the other led the way into the bedroom, apologising as he did so to
this half-starved son of a baronet--whose own home was almost a
palace--for the size of the room. The weary guest, however, made no
pretence of thanks or politeness. He merely steadied himself on his
friend's arm as he staggered across the room, and then, with all his
clothes on, dropped his exhausted body on the bed. In less than a minute
he was to all appearances sound asleep.

For several minutes Marriott stood in the open door and watched him;
praying devoutly that he might never find himself in a like predicament,
and then fell to wondering what he would do with his unbidden guest on
the morrow. But he did not stop long to think, for the call of his books
was imperative, and happen what might, he must see to it that he passed
that examination.

Having again locked the door into the hall, he sat down to his books and
resumed his notes on _materia medica_ where he had left off when the
bell rang. But it was difficult for some time to concentrate his mind on
the subject. His thoughts kept wandering to the picture of that
white-faced, strange-eyed fellow, starved and dirty, lying in his
clothes and boots on the bed. He recalled their schooldays together
before they had drifted apart, and how they had vowed eternal
friendship--and all the rest of it. And now! What horrible straits to be
in. How could any man let the love of dissipation take such hold upon
him?

But one of their vows together Marriott, it seemed, had completely
forgotten. Just now, at any rate, it lay too far in the background of
his memory to be recalled.

Through the half-open door--the bedroom led out of the sitting-room and
had no other door--came the sound of deep, long-drawn breathing, the
regular, steady breathing of a tired man, so tired that, even to listen
to it made Marriott almost want to go to sleep himself.

"He needed it," reflected the student, "and perhaps it came only just in
time!"

Perhaps so; for outside the bitter wind from across the Forth howled
cruelly and drove the rain in cold streams against the window-panes, and
down the deserted streets. Long before Marriott settled down again
properly to his reading, he heard distantly, as it were, through the
sentences of the book, the heavy, deep breathing of the sleeper in the
next room.

A couple of hours later, when he yawned and changed his books, he still
heard the breathing, and went cautiously up to the door to look round.

At first the darkness of the room must have deceived him, or else his
eyes were confused and dazzled by the recent glare of the reading lamp.
For a minute or two he could make out nothing at all but dark lumps of
furniture, the mass of the chest of drawers by the wall, and the white
patch where his bath stood in the centre of the floor.

Then the bed came slowly into view. And on it he saw the outline of the
sleeping body gradually take shape before his eyes, growing up strangely
into the darkness, till it stood out in marked relief--the long black
form against the white counterpane.

He could hardly help smiling. Field had not moved an inch. He watched
him a moment or two and then returned to his books. The night was full
of the singing voices of the wind and rain. There was no sound of
traffic; no hansoms clattered over the cobbles, and it was still too
early for the milk carts. He worked on steadily and conscientiously,
only stopping now and again to change a book, or to sip some of the
poisonous stuff that kept him awake and made his brain so active, and on
these occasions Field's breathing was always distinctly audible in the
room. Outside, the storm continued to howl, but inside the house all was
stillness. The shade of the reading lamp threw all the light upon the
littered table, leaving the other end of the room in comparative
darkness. The bedroom door was exactly opposite him where he sat. There
was nothing to disturb the worker, nothing but an occasional rush of
wind against the windows, and a slight pain in his arm.

This pain, however, which he was unable to account for, grew once or
twice very acute. It bothered him; and he tried to remember how, and
when, he could have bruised himself so severely, but without success.

At length the page before him turned from yellow to grey, and there were
sounds of wheels in the street below. It was four o'clock. Marriott
leaned back and yawned prodigiously. Then he drew back the curtains. The
storm had subsided and the Castle Rock was shrouded in mist. With
another yawn he turned away from the dreary outlook and prepared to
sleep the remaining four hours till breakfast on the sofa. Field was
still breathing heavily in the next room, and he first tip-toed across
the floor to take another look at him.

Peering cautiously round the half-opened door his first glance fell upon
the bed now plainly discernible in the grey light of morning. He stared
hard. Then he rubbed his eyes. Then he rubbed his eyes again and thrust
his head farther round the edge of the door. With fixed eyes he stared
harder still, and harder.

But it made no difference at all. He was staring into an empty room.

The sensation of fear he had felt when Field first appeared upon the
scene returned suddenly, but with much greater force. He became
conscious, too, that his left arm was throbbing violently and causing
him great pain. He stood wondering, and staring, and trying to collect
his thoughts. He was trembling from head to foot.

By a great effort of the will he left the support of the door and walked
forward boldly into the room.

There, upon the bed, was the impress of a body, where Field had lain and
slept. There was the mark of the head on the pillow, and the slight
indentation at the foot of the bed where the boots had rested on the
counterpane. And there, plainer than ever--for he was closer to it--was
_the breathing_!

Marriott tried to pull himself together. With a great effort he found
his voice and called his friend aloud by name!

"Field! Is that you? Where are you?"

There was no reply; but the breathing continued without interruption,
coming directly from the bed. His voice had such an unfamiliar sound
that Marriott did not care to repeat his questions, but he went down on
his knees and examined the bed above and below, pulling the mattress off
finally, and taking the coverings away separately one by one. But
though the sounds continued there was no visible sign of Field, nor was
there any space in which a human being, however small, could have
concealed itself. He pulled the bed out from the wall, but the sound
_stayed where it was_. It did not move with the bed.

Marriott, finding self-control a little difficult in his weary
condition, at once set about a thorough search of the room. He went
through the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the little alcove where the
clothes hung--everything. But there was no sign of anyone. The small
window near the ceiling was closed; and, anyhow, was not large enough to
let a cat pass. The sitting-room door was locked on the inside; he could
not have got out that way. Curious thoughts began to trouble Marriott's
mind, bringing in their train unwelcome sensations. He grew more and
more excited; he searched the bed again till it resembled the scene of a
pillow fight; he searched both rooms, knowing all the time it was
useless,--and then he searched again. A cold perspiration broke out all
over his body; and the sound of heavy breathing, all this time, never
ceased to come from the corner where Field had lain down to sleep.

Then he tried something else. He pushed the bed back exactly into its
original position--and himself lay down upon it just where his guest had
lain. But the same instant he sprang up again in a single bound. The
breathing was close beside him, almost on his cheek, and between him and
the wall! Not even a child could have squeezed into the space.

He went back into his sitting-room, opened the windows, welcoming all
the light and air possible, and tried to think the whole matter over
quietly and clearly. Men who read too hard, and slept too little, he
knew were sometimes troubled with very vivid hallucinations. Again he
calmly reviewed every incident of the night; his accurate sensations;
the vivid details; the emotions stirred in him; the dreadful feast--no
single hallucination could ever combine all these and cover so long a
period of time. But with less satisfaction he thought of the recurring
faintness, and curious sense of horror that had once or twice come over
him, and then of the violent pains in his arm. These were quite
unaccountable.

Moreover, now that he began to analyse and examine, there was one other
thing that fell upon him like a sudden revelation: _During the whole
time Field had not actually uttered a single word!_ Yet, as though in
mockery upon his reflections, there came ever from that inner room the
sound of the breathing, long-drawn, deep, and regular. The thing was
incredible. It was absurd.

Haunted by visions of brain fever and insanity, Marriott put on his cap
and macintosh and left the house. The morning air on Arthur's Seat would
blow the cobwebs from his brain; the scent of the heather, and above
all, the sight of the sea. He roamed over the wet slopes above Holyrood
for a couple of hours, and did not return until the exercise had shaken
some of the horror out of his bones, and given him a ravening appetite
into the bargain.

As he entered he saw that there was another man in the room, standing
against the window with his back to the light. He recognised his
fellow-student Greene, who was reading for the same examination.

"Read hard all night, Marriott," he said, "and thought I'd drop in here
to compare notes and have some breakfast. You're out early?" he added,
by way of a question. Marriott said he had a headache and a walk had
helped it, and Greene nodded and said "Ah!" But when the girl had set
the steaming porridge on the table and gone out again, he went on with
rather a forced tone, "Didn't know you had any friends who drank,
Marriott?"

This was obviously tentative, and Marriott replied drily that he did not
know it either.

"Sounds just as if some chap were 'sleeping it off' in there, doesn't
it, though?" persisted the other, with a nod in the direction of the
bedroom, and looking curiously at his friend. The two men stared
steadily at each other for several seconds, and then Marriott said
earnestly--

"Then you hear it too, thank God!"

"Of course I hear it. The door's open. Sorry if I wasn't meant to."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Marriott, lowering his voice. "But I'm
awfully relieved. Let me explain. Of course, if you hear it too, then
it's all right; but really it frightened me more than I can tell you. I
thought I was going to have brain fever, or something, and you know what
a lot depends on this exam. It always begins with sounds, or visions, or
some sort of beastly hallucination, and I--"

"Rot!" ejaculated the other impatiently. "What _are_ you talking about?"

"Now, listen to me, Greene," said Marriott, as calmly as he could, for
the breathing was still plainly audible, "and I'll tell you what I
mean, only don't interrupt." And thereupon he related exactly what had
happened during the night, telling everything, even down to the pain in
his arm. When it was over he got up from the table and crossed the room.

"You hear the breathing now plainly, don't you?" he said. Greene said he
did. "Well, come with me, and we'll search the room together." The
other, however, did not move from his chair.

"I've been in already," he said sheepishly; "I heard the sounds and
thought it was you. The door was ajar--so I went in."

Marriott made no comment, but pushed the door open as wide as it would
go. As it opened, the sound of breathing grew more and more distinct.

"_Someone_ must be in there," said Greene under his breath.

"_Someone_ is in there, but _where_?" said Marriott. Again he urged his
friend to go in with him. But Greene refused point-blank; said he had
been in once and had searched the room and there was nothing there. He
would not go in again for a good deal.

They shut the door and retired into the other room to talk it all over
with many pipes. Greene questioned his friend very closely, but without
illuminating result, since questions cannot alter facts.

"The only thing that ought to have a proper, a logical, explanation is
the pain in my arm," said Marriott, rubbing that member with an attempt
at a smile. "It hurts so infernally and aches all the way up. I can't
remember bruising it, though."

"Let me examine it for you," said Greene. "I'm awfully good at bones in
spite of the examiners' opinion to the contrary." It was a relief to
play the fool a bit, and Marriott took his coat off and rolled up his
sleeve.

"By George, though, I'm bleeding!" he exclaimed. "Look here! What on
earth's this?"

On the forearm, quite close to the wrist, was a thin red line. There was
a tiny drop of apparently fresh blood on it. Greene came over and looked
closely at it for some minutes. Then he sat back in his chair, looking
curiously at his friend's face.

"You've scratched yourself without knowing it," he said presently.

"There's no sign of a bruise. It must be something else that made the
arm ache."

Marriott sat very still, staring silently at his arm as though the
solution of the whole mystery lay there actually written upon the skin.

"What's the matter? I see nothing very strange about a scratch," said
Greene, in an unconvincing sort of voice. "It was your cuff links
probably. Last night in your excitement--"

But Marriott, white to the very lips, was trying to speak. The sweat
stood in great beads on his forehead. At last he leaned forward close to
his friend's face.

"Look," he said, in a low voice that shook a little. "Do you see that
red mark? I mean _underneath_ what you call the scratch?"

Greene admitted he saw something or other, and Marriott wiped the place
clean with his handkerchief and told him to look again more closely.

"Yes, I see," returned the other, lifting his head after a moment's
careful inspection. "It looks like an old scar."

"It _is_ an old scar," whispered Marriott, his lips trembling. "_Now_ it
all comes back to me."

"All what?" Greene fidgeted on his chair. He tried to laugh, but without
success. His friend seemed bordering on collapse.

"Hush! Be quiet, and--I'll tell you," he said. "_Field made that scar._"

For a whole minute the two men looked each other full in the face
without speaking.

"Field made that scar!" repeated Marriott at length in a louder voice.

"Field! You mean--last night?"

"No, not last night. Years ago--at school, with his knife. And I made a
scar in his arm with mine." Marriott was talking rapidly now.

"We exchanged drops of blood in each other's cuts. He put a drop into my
arm and I put one into his--"

"In the name of heaven, what for?"

"It was a boys' compact. We made a sacred pledge, a bargain. I remember
it all perfectly now. We had been reading some dreadful book and we
swore to appear to one another--I mean, whoever died first swore to show
himself to the other. And we sealed the compact with each other's blood.
I remember it all so well--the hot summer afternoon in the playground,
seven years ago--and one of the masters caught us and confiscated the
knives--and I have never thought of it again to this day--"

"And you mean--" stammered Greene.

But Marriott made no answer. He got up and crossed the room and lay down
wearily upon the sofa, hiding his face in his hands.

Greene himself was a bit non-plussed. He left his friend alone for a
little while, thinking it all over again. Suddenly an idea seemed to
strike him. He went over to where Marriott still lay motionless on the
sofa and roused him. In any case it was better to face the matter,
whether there was an explanation or not. Giving in was always the silly
exit.

"I say, Marriott," he began, as the other turned his white face up to
him. "There's no good being so upset about it. I mean--if it's all an
hallucination we know what to do. And if it isn't--well, we know what to
think, don't we?"

"I suppose so. But it frightens me horribly for some reason," returned
his friend in a hushed voice. "And that poor devil--"

"But, after all, if the worst is true and--and that chap _has_ kept his
promise--well, he has, that's all, isn't it?"

Marriott nodded.

"There's only one thing that occurs to me," Greene went on, "and that
is, are you quite sure that--that he really ate like that--I mean that
he actually _ate anything at all_?" he finished, blurting out all his
thought.

Marriott stared at him for a moment and then said he could easily make
certain. He spoke quietly. After the main shock no lesser surprise could
affect him.

"I put the things away myself," he said, "after we had finished. They
are on the third shelf in that cupboard. No one's touched 'em since."

He pointed without getting up, and Greene took the hint and went over to
look.

"Exactly," he said, after a brief examination; "just as I thought. It
was partly hallucination, at any rate. The things haven't been touched.
Come and see for yourself."

Together they examined the shelf. There was the brown loaf, the plate of
stale scones, the oatcake, all untouched. Even the glass of whisky
Marriott had poured out stood there with the whisky still in it.

"You were feeding--no one," said Greene "Field ate and drank nothing. He
was not there at all!"

"But the breathing?" urged the other in a low voice, staring with a
dazed expression on his face.

Greene did not answer. He walked over to the bedroom, while Marriott
followed him with his eyes. He opened the door, and listened. There was
no need for words. The sound of deep, regular breathing came floating
through the air. There was no hallucination about that, at any rate.
Marriott could hear it where he stood on the other side of the room.

Greene closed the door and came back. "There's only one thing to do," he
declared with decision. "Write home and find out about him, and
meanwhile come and finish your reading in my rooms. I've got an extra
bed."

"Agreed," returned the Fourth Year Man; "there's no hallucination about
that exam; I must pass that whatever happens."

And this was what they did.

It was about a week later when Marriott got the answer from his sister.
Part of it he read out to Greene--

"It is curious," she wrote, "that in your letter you should have
enquired after Field. It seems a terrible thing, but you know only a
short while ago Sir John's patience became exhausted, and he turned him
out of the house, they say without a penny. Well, what do you think? He
has killed himself. At least, it looks like suicide. Instead of leaving
the house, he went down into the cellar and simply starved himself to
death. . . . They're trying to suppress it, of course, but I heard it all
from my maid, who got it from their footman. . . . They found the body on
the 14th and the doctor said he had died about twelve hours before. . . .
He was dreadfully thin. . . ."

"Then he died on the 13th," said Greene.

Marriott nodded.

"That's the very night he came to see you."

Marriott nodded again.

A Case of Eavesdropping

2007-04-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

A CASE OF EAVESDROPPING
by Algernon Blackwood

Jim Shorthouse was the sort of fellow who always made a mess of things.
Everything with which his hands or mind came into contact issued from
such contact in an unqualified and irremediable state of mess. His
college days were a mess: he was twice rusticated. His schooldays were a
mess: he went to half a dozen, each passing him on to the next with a
worse character and in a more developed state of mess. His early boyhood
was the sort of mess that copy-books and dictionaries spell with a big
"M," and his babyhood--ugh! was the embodiment of howling, yowling,
screaming mess.

At the age of forty, however, there came a change in his troubled life,
when he met a girl with half a million in her own right, who consented
to marry him, and who very soon succeeded in reducing his most messy
existence into a state of comparative order and system.

Certain incidents, important and otherwise, of Jim's life would never
have come to be told here but for the fact that in getting into his
"messes" and out of them again he succeeded in drawing himself into the
atmosphere of peculiar circumstances and strange happenings. He
attracted to his path the curious adventures of life as unfailingly as
meat attracts flies, and jam wasps. It is to the meat and jam of his
life, so to speak, that he owes his experiences; his after-life was all
pudding, which attracts nothing but greedy children. With marriage the
interest of his life ceased for all but one person, and his path became
regular as the sun's instead of erratic as a comet's.

The first experience in order of time that he related to me shows that
somewhere latent behind his disarranged nervous system there lay psychic
perceptions of an uncommon order. About the age of twenty-two--I think
after his second rustication--his father's purse and patience had
equally given out, and Jim found himself stranded high and dry in a
large American city. High and dry! And the only clothes that had no
holes in them safely in the keeping of his uncle's wardrobe.

Careful reflection on a bench in one of the city parks led him to the
conclusion that the only thing to do was to persuade the city editor of
one of the daily journals that he possessed an observant mind and a
ready pen, and that he could "do good work for your paper, sir, as a
reporter." This, then, he did, standing at a most unnatural angle
between the editor and the window to conceal the whereabouts of the
holes.

"Guess we'll have to give you a week's trial," said the editor, who,
ever on the lookout for good chance material, took on shoals of men in
that way and retained on the average one man per shoal. Anyhow it gave
Jim Shorthouse the wherewithal to sew up the holes and relieve his
uncle's wardrobe of its burden.

Then he went to find living quarters; and in this proceeding his unique
characteristics already referred to--what theosophists would call his
Karma--began unmistakably to assert themselves, for it was in the house
he eventually selected that this sad tale took place.

There are no "diggings" in American cities. The alternatives for small
incomes are grim enough--rooms in a boarding-house where meals are
served, or in a room-house where no meals are served--not even
breakfast. Rich people live in palaces, of course, but Jim had nothing
to do with "sich-like." His horizon was bounded by boarding-houses and
room-houses; and, owing to the necessary irregularity of his meals and
hours, he took the latter.

It was a large, gaunt-looking place in a side street, with dirty windows
and a creaking iron gate, but the rooms were large, and the one he
selected and paid for in advance was on the top floor. The landlady
looked gaunt and dusty as the house, and quite as old. Her eyes were
green and faded, and her features large.

"Waal," she twanged, with her electrifying Western drawl, "that's the
room, if you like it, and that's the price I said. Now, if you want it,
why, just say so; and if you don't, why, it don't hurt me any."

Jim wanted to shake her, but he feared the clouds of long-accumulated
dust in her clothes, and as the price and size of the room suited him,
he decided to take it.

"Anyone else on this floor?" he asked.

She looked at him queerly out of her faded eyes before she answered.

"None of my guests ever put such questions to me before," she said; "but
I guess you're different. Why, there's no one at all but an old gent
that's stayed here every bit of five years. He's over thar," pointing
to the end of the passage.

"Ah! I see," said Shorthouse feebly. "So I'm alone up here?"

"Reckon you are, pretty near," she twanged out, ending the conversation
abruptly by turning her back on her new "guest," and going slowly and
deliberately downstairs.

The newspaper work kept Shorthouse out most of the night. Three times a
week he got home at 1 a.m., and three times at 3 a.m. The room proved
comfortable enough, and he paid for a second week. His unusual hours had
so far prevented his meeting any inmates of the house, and not a sound
had been heard from the "old gent" who shared the floor with him. It
seemed a very quiet house.

One night, about the middle of the second week, he came home tired after
a long day's work. The lamp that usually stood all night in the hall had
burned itself out, and he had to stumble upstairs in the dark. He made
considerable noise in doing so, but nobody seemed to be disturbed. The
whole house was utterly quiet, and probably everybody was asleep. There
were no lights under any of the doors. All was in darkness. It was after
two o'clock.

After reading some English letters that had come during the day, and
dipping for a few minutes into a book, he became drowsy and got ready
for bed. Just as he was about to get in between the sheets, he stopped
for a moment and listened. There rose in the night, as he did so, the
sound of steps somewhere in the house below. Listening attentively, he
heard that it was somebody coming upstairs--a heavy tread, and the owner
taking no pains to step quietly. On it came up the stairs, tramp, tramp,
tramp--evidently the tread of a big man, and one in something of a
hurry.

At once thoughts connected somehow with fire and police flashed through
Jim's brain, but there were no sounds of voices with the steps, and he
reflected in the same moment that it could only be the old gentleman
keeping late hours and tumbling upstairs in the darkness. He was in the
act of turning out the gas and stepping into bed, when the house resumed
its former stillness by the footsteps suddenly coming to a dead stop
immediately outside his own room.

With his hand on the gas, Shorthouse paused a moment before turning it
out to see if the steps would go on again, when he was startled by a
loud knocking on his door. Instantly, in obedience to a curious and
unexplained instinct, he turned out the light, leaving himself and the
room in total darkness.

He had scarcely taken a step across the room to open the door, when a
voice from the other side of the wall, so close it almost sounded in his
ear, exclaimed in German, "Is that you, father? Come in."

The speaker was a man in the next room, and the knocking, after all, had
not been on his own door, but on that of the adjoining chamber, which he
had supposed to be vacant.

Almost before the man in the passage had time to answer in German, "Let
me in at once," Jim heard someone cross the floor and unlock the door.
Then it was slammed to with a bang, and there was audible the sound of
footsteps about the room, and of chairs being drawn up to a table and
knocking against furniture on the way. The men seemed wholly regardless
of their neighbour's comfort, for they made noise enough to waken the
dead.

"Serves me right for taking a room in such a cheap hole," reflected Jim
in the darkness. "I wonder whom she's let the room to!"

The two rooms, the landlady had told him, were originally one. She had
put up a thin partition--just a row of boards--to increase her income.
The doors were adjacent, and only separated by the massive upright beam
between them. When one was opened or shut the other rattled.

With utter indifference to the comfort of the other sleepers in the
house, the two Germans had meanwhile commenced to talk both at once and
at the top of their voices. They talked emphatically, even angrily. The
words "Father" and "Otto" were freely used. Shorthouse understood
German, but as he stood listening for the first minute or two, an
eavesdropper in spite of himself, it was difficult to make head or tail
of the talk, for neither would give way to the other, and the jumble of
guttural sounds and unfinished sentences was wholly unintelligible.
Then, very suddenly, both voices dropped together; and, after a moment's
pause, the deep tones of one of them, who seemed to be the "father,"
said, with the utmost distinctness--

"You mean, Otto, that you refuse to get it?"

There was a sound of someone shuffling in the chair before the answer
came. "I mean that I don't know how to get it. It is so much, father. It
is _too_ much. A part of it--"

"A part of it!" cried the other, with an angry oath, "a part of it, when
ruin and disgrace are already in the house, is worse than useless. If
you can get half you can get all, you wretched fool. Half-measures only
damn all concerned."

"You told me last time--" began the other firmly, but was not allowed to
finish. A succession of horrible oaths drowned his sentence, and the
father went on, in a voice vibrating with anger--

"You know she will give you anything. You have only been married a few
months. If you ask and give a plausible reason you can get all we want
and more. You can ask it temporarily. All will be paid back. It will
re-establish the firm, and she will never know what was done with it.
With that amount, Otto, you know I can recoup all these terrible losses,
and in less than a year all will be repaid. But without it. . . . You must
get it, Otto. Hear me, you must. Am I to be arrested for the misuse of
trust moneys? Is our honoured name to be cursed and spat on?" The old
man choked and stammered in his anger and desperation.

Shorthouse stood shivering in the darkness and listening in spite of
himself. The conversation had carried him along with it, and he had been
for some reason afraid to let his neighbourhood be known. But at this
point he realised that he had listened too long and that he must inform
the two men that they could be overheard to every single syllable. So he
coughed loudly, and at the same time rattled the handle of his door. It
seemed to have no effect, for the voices continued just as loudly as
before, the son protesting and the father growing more and more angry.
He coughed again persistently, and also contrived purposely in the
darkness to tumble against the partition, feeling the thin boards yield
easily under his weight, and making a considerable noise in so doing.
But the voices went on unconcernedly, and louder than ever. Could it be
possible they had not heard?

By this time Jim was more concerned about his own sleep than the
morality of overhearing the private scandals of his neighbours, and he
went out into the passage and knocked smartly at their door. Instantly,
as if by magic, the sounds ceased. Everything dropped into utter
silence. There was no light under the door and not a whisper could be
heard within. He knocked again, but received no answer.

"Gentlemen," he began at length, with his lips close to the keyhole and
in German, "please do not talk so loud. I can overhear all you say in
the next room. Besides, it is very late, and I wish to sleep."

He paused and listened, but no answer was forthcoming. He turned the
handle and found the door was locked. Not a sound broke the stillness of
the night except the faint swish of the wind over the skylight and the
creaking of a board here and there in the house below. The cold air of a
very early morning crept down the passage, and made him shiver. The
silence of the house began to impress him disagreeably. He looked behind
him and about him, hoping, and yet fearing, that something would break
the stillness. The voices still seemed to ring on in his ears; but that
sudden silence, when he knocked at the door, affected him far more
unpleasantly than the voices, and put strange thoughts in his
brain--thoughts he did not like or approve.

Moving stealthily from the door, he peered over the banisters into the
space below. It was like a deep vault that might conceal in its shadows
anything that was not good. It was not difficult to fancy he saw an
indistinct moving to-and-fro below him. Was that a figure sitting on the
stairs peering up obliquely at him out of hideous eyes? Was that a sound
of whispering and shuffling down there in the dark halls and forsaken
landings? Was it something more than the inarticulate murmur of the
night?

The wind made an effort overhead, singing over the skylight, and the
door behind him rattled and made him start. He turned to go back to his
room, and the draught closed the door slowly in his face as if there
were someone pressing against it from the other side. When he pushed it
open and went in, a hundred shadowy forms seemed to dart swiftly and
silently back to their corners and hiding-places. But in the adjoining
room the sounds had entirely ceased, and Shorthouse soon crept into bed,
and left the house with its inmates, waking or sleeping, to take care of
themselves, while he entered the region of dreams and silence.

Next day, strong in the common sense that the sunlight brings, he
determined to lodge a complaint against the noisy occupants of the next
room and make the landlady request them to modify their voices at such
late hours of the night and morning. But it so happened that she was not
to be seen that day, and when he returned from the office at midnight it
was, of course, too late.

Looking under the door as he came up to bed he noticed that there was no
light, and concluded that the Germans were not in. So much the better.
He went to sleep about one o'clock, fully decided that if they came up
later and woke him with their horrible noises he would not rest till he
had roused the landlady and made her reprove them with that
authoritative twang, in which every word was like the lash of a metallic
whip.

However, there proved to be no need for such drastic measures, for
Shorthouse slumbered peacefully all night, and his dreams--chiefly of
the fields of grain and flocks of sheep on the far-away farms of his
father's estate--were permitted to run their fanciful course unbroken.

Two nights later, however, when he came home tired out, after a
difficult day, and wet and blown about by one of the wickedest storms he
had ever seen, his dreams--always of the fields and sheep--were not
destined to be so undisturbed.

He had already dozed off in that delicious glow that follows the removal
of wet clothes and the immediate snuggling under warm blankets, when his
consciousness, hovering on the borderland between sleep and waking, was
vaguely troubled by a sound that rose indistinctly from the depths of
the house, and, between the gusts of wind and rain, reached his ears
with an accompanying sense of uneasiness and discomfort. It rose on the
night air with some pretence of regularity, dying away again in the roar
of the wind to reassert itself distantly in the deep, brief hushes of
the storm.

For a few minutes Jim's dreams were coloured only--tinged, as it were,
by this impression of fear approaching from somewhere insensibly upon
him. His consciousness, at first, refused to be drawn back from that
enchanted region where it had wandered, and he did not immediately
awaken. But the nature of his dreams changed unpleasantly. He saw the
sheep suddenly run huddled together, as though frightened by the
neighbourhood of an enemy, while the fields of waving corn became
agitated as though some monster were moving uncouthly among the crowded
stalks. The sky grew dark, and in his dream an awful sound came
somewhere from the clouds. It was in reality the sound downstairs
growing more distinct.

Shorthouse shifted uneasily across the bed with something like a groan
of distress. The next minute he awoke, and found himself sitting
straight up in bed--listening. Was it a nightmare? Had he been dreaming
evil dreams, that his flesh crawled and the hair stirred on his head?

The room was dark and silent, but outside the wind howled dismally and
drove the rain with repeated assaults against the rattling windows. How
nice it would be--the thought flashed through his mind--if all winds,
like the west wind, went down with the sun! They made such fiendish
noises at night, like the crying of angry voices. In the daytime they
had such a different sound. If only--

Hark! It was no dream after all, for the sound was momentarily growing
louder, and its _cause_ was coming up the stairs. He found himself
speculating feebly what this cause might be, but the sound was still too
indistinct to enable him to arrive at any definite conclusion.

The voice of a church clock striking two made itself heard above the
wind. It was just about the hour when the Germans had commenced their
performance three nights before. Shorthouse made up his mind that if
they began it again he would not put up with it for very long. Yet he
was already horribly conscious of the difficulty he would have of
getting out of bed. The clothes were so warm and comforting against his
back. The sound, still steadily coming nearer, had by this time become
differentiated from the confused clamour of the elements, and had
resolved itself into the footsteps of one or more persons.

"The Germans, hang 'em!" thought Jim. "But what on earth is the matter
with me? I never felt so queer in all my life."

He was trembling all over, and felt as cold as though he were in a
freezing atmosphere. His nerves were steady enough, and he felt no
diminution of physical courage, but he was conscious of a curious sense
of malaise and trepidation, such as even the most vigorous men have been
known to experience when in the first grip of some horrible and deadly
disease. As the footsteps approached this feeling of weakness increased.
He felt a strange lassitude creeping over him, a sort of exhaustion,
accompanied by a growing numbness in the extremities, and a sensation of
dreaminess in the head, as if perhaps the consciousness were leaving its
accustomed seat in the brain and preparing to act on another plane. Yet,
strange to say, as the vitality was slowly withdrawn from his body, his
senses seemed to grow more acute.

Meanwhile the steps were already on the landing at the top of the
stairs, and Shorthouse, still sitting upright in bed, heard a heavy body
brush past his door and along the wall outside, almost immediately
afterwards the loud knocking of someone's knuckles on the door of the
adjoining room.

Instantly, though so far not a sound had proceeded from within, he
heard, through the thin partition, a chair pushed back and a man quickly
cross the floor and open the door.

"Ah! it's you," he heard in the son's voice. Had the fellow, then, been
sitting silently in there all this time, waiting for his father's
arrival? To Shorthouse it came not as a pleasant reflection by any
means.

There was no answer to this dubious greeting, but the door was closed
quickly, and then there was a sound as if a bag or parcel had been
thrown on a wooden table and had slid some distance across it before
stopping.

"What's that?" asked the son, with anxiety in his tone.

"You may know before I go," returned the other gruffly. Indeed his voice
was more than gruff: it betrayed ill-suppressed passion.

Shorthouse was conscious of a strong desire to stop the conversation
before it proceeded any further, but somehow or other his will was not
equal to the task, and he could not get out of bed. The conversation
went on, every tone and inflexion distinctly audible above the noise of
the storm.

In a low voice the father continued. Jim missed some of the words at the
beginning of the sentence. It ended with: " . . . but now they've all left,
and I've managed to get up to you. You know what I've come for." There
was distinct menace in his tone.

"Yes," returned the other; "I have been waiting."

"And the money?" asked the father impatiently.

No answer.

"You've had three days to get it in, and I've contrived to stave off the
worst so far--but to-morrow is the end."

No answer.

"Speak, Otto! What have you got for me? Speak, my son; for God's sake,
tell me."

There was a moment's silence, during which the old man's vibrating
accents seemed to echo through the rooms. Then came in a low voice the
answer--

"I have nothing."

"Otto!" cried the other with passion, "nothing!"

"I can get nothing," came almost in a whisper.

"You lie!" cried the other, in a half-stifled voice. "I swear you lie.
Give me the money."

A chair was heard scraping along the floor. Evidently the men had been
sitting over the table, and one of them had risen. Shorthouse heard the
bag or parcel drawn across the table, and then a step as if one of the
men was crossing to the door.

"Father, what's in that? I must know," said Otto, with the first signs
of determination in his voice. There must have been an effort on the
son's part to gain possession of the parcel in question, and on the
father's to retain it, for between them it fell to the ground. A curious
rattle followed its contact with the floor. Instantly there were sounds
of a scuffle. The men were struggling for the possession of the box. The
elder man with oaths, and blasphemous imprecations, the other with short
gasps that betokened the strength of his efforts. It was of short
duration, and the younger man had evidently won, for a minute later was
heard his angry exclamation.

"I knew it. Her jewels! You scoundrel, you shall never have them. It is
a crime."

The elder man uttered a short, guttural laugh, which froze Jim's blood
and made his skin creep. No word was spoken, and for the space of ten
seconds there was a living silence. Then the air trembled with the sound
of a thud, followed immediately by a groan and the crash of a heavy body
falling over on to the table. A second later there was a lurching from
the table on to the floor and against the partition that separated the
rooms. The bed quivered an instant at the shock, but the unholy spell
was lifted from his soul and Jim Shorthouse sprang out of bed and across
the floor in a single bound. He knew that ghastly murder had been
done--the murder by a father of his son.

With shaking fingers but a determined heart he lit the gas, and the
first thing in which his eyes corroborated the evidence of his ears was
the horrifying detail that the lower portion of the partition bulged
unnaturally into his own room. The glaring paper with which it was
covered had cracked under the tension and the boards beneath it bent
inwards towards him. What hideous load was behind them, he shuddered to
think.

All this he saw in less than a second. Since the final lurch against the
wall not a sound had proceeded from the room, not even a groan or a
foot-step. All was still but the howl of the wind, which to his ears
had in it a note of triumphant horror.

Shorthouse was in the act of leaving the room to rouse the house and
send for the police--in fact his hand was already on the door-knob--when
something in the room arrested his attention. Out of the corner of his
eyes he thought he caught sight of something moving. He was sure of it,
and turning his eyes in the direction, he found he was not mistaken.

Something was creeping slowly towards him along the floor. It was
something dark and serpentine in shape, and it came from the place where
the partition bulged. He stooped down to examine it with feelings of
intense horror and repugnance, and he discovered that it was moving
toward him from the _other side_ of the wall. His eyes were fascinated,
and for the moment he was unable to move. Silently, slowly, from side to
side like a thick worm, it crawled forward into the room beneath his
frightened eyes, until at length he could stand it no longer and
stretched out his arm to touch it. But at the instant of contact he
withdrew his hand with a suppressed scream. It was sluggish--and it was
warm! and he saw that his fingers were stained with living crimson.

A second more, and Shorthouse was out in the passage with his hand on
the door of the next room. It was locked. He plunged forward with all
his weight against it, and, the lock giving way, he fell headlong into a
room that was pitch dark and very cold. In a moment he was on his feet
again and trying to penetrate the blackness. Not a sound, not a
movement. Not even the sense of a presence. It was empty, miserably
empty!

Across the room he could trace the outline of a window with rain
streaming down the outside, and the blurred lights of the city beyond.
But the room was empty, appallingly empty; and so still. He stood there,
cold as ice, staring, shivering listening. Suddenly there was a step
behind him and a light flashed into the room, and when he turned quickly
with his arm up as if to ward off a terrific blow he found himself face
to face with the landlady. Instantly the reaction began to set in.

It was nearly three o'clock in the morning, and he was standing there
with bare feet and striped pyjamas in a small room, which in the
merciful light he perceived to be absolutely empty, carpetless, and
without a stick of furniture, or even a window-blind. There he stood
staring at the disagreeable landlady. And there she stood too, staring
and silent, in a black wrapper, her head almost bald, her face white as
chalk, shading a sputtering candle with one bony hand and peering over
it at him with her blinking green eyes. She looked positively hideous.

"Waal?" she drawled at length, "I heard yer right enough. Guess you
couldn't sleep! Or just prowlin' round a bit--is that it?"

The empty room, the absence of all traces of the recent tragedy, the
silence, the hour, his striped pyjamas and bare feet--everything
together combined to deprive him momentarily of speech. He stared at her
blankly without a word.

"Waal?" clanked the awful voice.

"My dear woman," he burst out finally, "there's been something awful--"
So far his desperation took him, but no farther. He positively stuck at
the substantive.

"Oh! there hasn't been nothin'," she said slowly still peering at him.
"I reckon you've only seen and heard what the others did. I never can
keep folks on this floor long. Most of 'em catch on sooner or
later--that is, the ones that's kind of quick and sensitive. Only you
being an Englishman I thought you wouldn't mind. Nothin' really happens;
it's only thinkin' like."

Shorthouse was beside himself. He felt ready to pick her up and drop her
over the banisters, candle and all.

"Look there," he said, pointing at her within an inch of her blinking
eyes with the fingers that had touched the oozing blood; "look there, my
good woman. Is that only thinking?"

She stared a minute, as if not knowing what he meant.

"I guess so," she said at length.

He followed her eyes, and to his amazement saw that his fingers were as
white as usual, and quite free from the awful stain that had been there
ten minutes before. There was no sign of blood. No amount of staring
could bring it back. Had he gone out of his mind? Had his eyes and ears
played such tricks with him? Had his senses become false and perverted?
He dashed past the landlady, out into the passage, and gained his own
room in a couple of strides. Whew! . . . the partition no longer bulged.
The paper was not torn. There was no creeping, crawling thing on the
faded old carpet.

"It's all over now," drawled the metallic voice behind him. "I'm going
to bed again."

He turned and saw the landlady slowly going downstairs again, still
shading the candle with her hand and peering up at him from time to time
as she moved. A black, ugly, unwholesome object, he thought, as she
disappeared into the darkness below, and the last flicker of her candle
threw a queer-shaped shadow along the wall and over the ceiling.

Without hesitating a moment, Shorthouse threw himself into his clothes
and went out of the house. He preferred the storm to the horrors of that
top floor, and he walked the streets till daylight. In the evening he
told the landlady he would leave next day, in spite of her assurances
that nothing more would happen.

"It never comes back," she said--"that is, not after he's killed."

Shorthouse gasped.

"You gave me a lot for my money," he growled.

"Waal, it aren't my show," she drawled. "I'm no spirit medium. You take
chances. Some'll sleep right along and never hear nothin'. Others, like
yourself, are different and get the whole thing."

"Who's the old gentleman?--does he hear it?" asked Jim.

"There's no old gentleman at all," she answered coolly. "I just told
you that to make you feel easy like in case you did hear anythin'. You
were all alone on the floor."

"Say now," she went on, after a pause in which Shorthouse could think of
nothing to say but unpublishable things, "say now, do tell, did you feel
sort of cold when the show was on, sort of tired and weak, I mean, as if
you might be going to die?"

"How can I say?" he answered savagely; "what I felt God only knows."

"Waal, but He won't tell," she drawled out. "Only I was wonderin' how
you really did feel, because the man who had that room last was found
one morning in bed--"

"In bed?"

"He was dead. He was the one before you. Oh! You don't need to get
rattled so. You're all right. And it all really happened, they do say.
This house used to be a private residence some twenty-five years ago,
and a German family of the name of Steinhardt lived here. They had a big
business in Wall Street, and stood 'way up in things."

"Ah!" said her listener.

"Oh yes, they did, right at the top, till one fine day it all bust and
the old man skipped with the boodle--"

"Skipped with the boodle?"

"That's so," she said; "got clear away with all the money, and the son
was found dead in his house, committed soocide it was thought. Though
there was some as said he couldn't have stabbed himself and fallen in
that position. They said he was murdered. The father died in prison.
They tried to fasten the murder on him, but there was no motive, or no
evidence, or no somethin'. I forget now."

"Very pretty," said Shorthouse.

"I'll show you somethin' mighty queer any-ways," she drawled, "if you'll
come upstairs a minute. I've heard the steps and voices lots of times;
they don't pheaze me any. I'd just as lief hear so many dogs barkin'.
You'll find the whole story in the newspapers if you look it up--not
what goes on here, but the story of the Germans. My house would be
ruined if they told all, and I'd sue for damages."

They reached the bedroom, and the woman went in and pulled up the edge
of the carpet where Shorthouse had seen the blood soaking in the
previous night.

"Look thar, if you feel like it," said the old hag. Stooping down, he
saw a dark, dull stain in the boards that corresponded exactly to the
shape and position of the blood as he had seen it.

That night he slept in a hotel, and the following day sought new
quarters. In the newspapers on file in his office after a long search he
found twenty years back the detailed story, substantially as the woman
had said, of Steinhardt & Co.'s failure, the absconding and subsequent
arrest of the senior partner, and the suicide, or murder, of his son
Otto. The landlady's room-house had formerly been their private
residence.