AT A WINTER'S FIRE

by

BERNARD CAPES

Author of _The Lake of Wine_, etc. 

1899

All except three of the following Tales have already appeared in Englishor American Magazines. The best thanks of the author are due to theEditors of the "Cornhill, " "Macmillan's, " "Lippincott's" and "Pearson's"Magazines, and to the Editor of the "Sketch, " for permission to reprintsuch of the stories as have been published in their pages. 

Contents

THE MOON STRICKEN

JACK AND JILL

THE VANISHING HOUSE

DARK DIGNUM

WILLIAM TYRWHITT'S "COPY"

A LAZY ROMANCE

BLACK VENN

AN EDDY ON THE FLOOR

DINAH'S MAMMOTH

THE BLACK REAPER

A VOICE FROM THE PIT

THE MOON STRICKEN

It so fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belatedin the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the greatChamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose toweringsnow-flung walls seemed--as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as aleech's mouth--to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping and climbing toilfully against the shoulderingof great tumbled boulders, or winning for itself but narrow foothold overslippery ridges, was thawed clear of snow; but the cold soft peril yetlay upon its flanks thick enough for a wintry plunge of ten feet, or maybe fifty where the edge of the causeway fell over to the lower furrowsof the ravine. It was a matter of policy to go with caution, and a thingof some moment to hear the thud and splintering of little distanticefalls about one in the darkness. Now and again a cold arrow of windwould sing down from the frosty peaks above or jerk with a squiggle oflaughter among the fallen slabs in the valley. And these were the onlyvoices to prick me on through a dreariness lonely as death. 

I knew the road, but not its night terrors. Passing along it some daysbefore in the glory of sunshine, broad paddocks and islands of green hadcomforted the shattered white ruin of the place, and I had traversed itmerely as a magnificent episode in the indifferent history of my life. Now, as it seemed, I became one with it--an awful waif of solemnity, athing apart from mankind and its warm intercourse and ruddy inn doors, aspectral anomaly, whose austere epitaph was once writ upon the snowcoating some fallen slab of those glimmering about me. I thought thewhole gorge smelt of tombs, like the vault of a cathedral. I thought, inthe incomprehensible low moaning sound that ever and again seemed to eddyabout me when the wind had swooped and passed, that I recognised theforlorn voices of brother spirits long since dead and forgotten of theworld. 

Suddenly I felt the sweat cold under the knapsack that swung upon myback; stopped, faced about and became human again. Ridge over ridgeto my right the mountain summits fell away against a fathomless sky; andtopping the furthermost was a little paring of silver light, the coronetof the rising moon. But the glory of the full orb was in the retrospect;for, closing the savage vista of the ravine, stood up far away a clusterof jagged pinnacles--opal, translucent, lustrous as the peaks of icebergsthat are the frozen music of the sea. 

It was the toothed summit of the Aiguille Verte, now prosaically bathedin the light of the full moon; but to me, looking from that grim andpassionless hollow, it stood for the white hand of God lifted in menaceto the evil spirits of the glen. 

I drank my fill of the good sight, and then turned me to my tramp againwith a freshness in my throat as though it had gulped a glass ofchampagne. Presently I knew myself descending, leaving, as I felt ratherthan saw, the stark horror of the gorge and its glimmering snow patchesabove me. Puffs of a warmer air purred past my face with little friendlysighs of welcome, and the hum of a far-off torrent struck like a wedgeinto the indurated fibre of the night. As I dropped, however, themountain heads grew up against the moon, and withheld the comfort of herradiance; and it was not until the whimper of the torrent had quickenedabout me to a plunging roar, and my foot was on the striding bridge thattook its waters at a step, that her light broke through a topmost cleftin the hills, and made glory of the leaping thunder that crashed beneathmy feet. 

Thereafter all was peace. The road led downwards into a broadeningvalley, where the smell of flowers came about me, and the mountain wallswithdrew and were no longer overwhelming. The slope eased off, dippingand rising no more than a ground swell; and by-and-by I was on a leveltrack that ran straight as a stretched ribbon and was reasonable to mytired feet. 

Now the first dusky châlets of the hamlet of Bel-Oiseau straggled towardsme, and it was music in my ears to hear the cattle blow and rattle intheir stalls under the sleeping lofts as I passed outside in themoonlight. Five minutes more, and the great zinc onion on the spire ofthe church glistened towards me, and I was in the heart of the silentvillage. 

From the deep green shadow cast by the graveyard wall, heavilybuttressed against avalanches, a form wriggled out into the moonlightand fell with a dusty thud at my feet, mowing and chopping at the airwith its aimless claws. I started back with a sudden jerk of my pulses. The thing was horrible by reason of its inarticulate voice, which issuedfrom the shapeless folds of its writhings like the wet gutturizing of aback-broken horse. Instinct with repulsion, I stood a moment dismayed, when light flashed from an open doorway a dozen yards further down thestreet, and a woman ran across to the prostrate form. 

"Up, graceless one!" she cried; "and carry thy seven devils withindoors!"

The figure gathered itself together at her voice, and stood in an angleof the buttresses quaking and shielding its eyes with two gaunt arms. 

"Can I not exchange a word with Mère Pettit, " scolded the woman, "butthou must sneak from behind my back on thy crazed moon-hunting?"

"Pity, pity, " moaned the figure; and then the woman noticed me, anddropped a curtsy. 

"Pardon, " she said; "but he has been affronting Monsieur with hisantics?"

"He is stricken, Madame?"

"Ah, yes, Monsieur. Holy Mother, but how stricken!"

"It is sad. "

"Monsieur knows not how sad. It is so always, but most a great deal whenthe moon is full. He was a good lad once. "

Monsieur puts his hand in his pocket. Madame hears the clink of coin andtouches the enclosed fingers with her own delicately. Monsieur withdrawshis hand empty. 

"Pardon, Madame. "

"Monsieur has the courage of a gentleman. Come, Camille, little fool! asweet good-night to Monsieur. "

"Stay, Madame. I have walked far and am weary. Is there an hotel inBel-Oiseau?"

"Monsieur is jesting. We are but a hundred of poor châlets. "

"An auberge, then--a cabaret--anything?"

"_Les Trois Chèvres_. It is not for such as you. "

"Is it, then, that I must toil onwards to Châtelard?"

"Monsieur does not know? The _Hôtel Royal_ was burned to the walls sixmonths since. "

"It follows that I must lie in the fields. "

Madame hesitates, ponders, and makes up her mind. 

"I keep Monsieur talking, and the night wind is sharp from the snow. Itis ill for a heated skin, and one should be indoors. I have a bedroomthat is at Monsieur's disposition, if Monsieur will condescend?"

Monsieur will condescend. Monsieur would condescend to a loft and a trussof straw, in default of the neat little chilly chamber that is allottedhim, so sick are his very limbs with long tramping, and so uninvitingfigures the further stretch in the moonlight to Châtelard, with itsburnt-out carcase of an hotel. 

This is how I came to quarter myself on Madame Barbière and her idiotson, and how I ultimately learned from the lips of the latter the strangestory of his own immediate fall from reason and the dear light ofintellect. 

 * * * * *

By day Camille Barbière proved to be a young man, some five and twentyyears of age, of a handsome and impressive exterior. His dark hairlay close about his well-shaped head; his features were regular and cutbold as an Etruscan cameo; his limbs were elastic and moulded into thesupple finish of one whose life has not been set upon level roads. At aspeculative distance he appeared a straight specimen of a Burgundianyouth--sinewy, clean-formed, and graceful, though slender to gauntness;and it was only on nearer contact that one marvelled to see the soul dieout of him, as a face set in the shadow of leafage resolves itself intosome accident of twisted branches as one approaches the billowing treethat presented it. 

The soul of Camille, the idiot, had warped long after its earthlytabernacle had grown firm and fair to look upon. Cause and effect werenot one from birth in him; and the result was a most wistful expression, as though the lost intellect were for ever struggling and failing torecall its ancient mastery. Mostly he was a gentle young man, noteworthyfor nothing but the uncomplaining patience with which he daily observedthe monotonous routine of simple duties that were now all-sufficient forthe poor life that had "crept so long on a broken wing. " He milked thebig, red, barrel-bodied cow, and churned industriously for butter; hekept the little vegetable garden in order and nursed the Savoys intofatness like plumping babies; he drove the goats to pasture on themountain slopes, and all day sat among the rhododendrons, the forgottensoul behind his eyes conning the dead language of fate, as a foreignervainly interrogates the abstruse complexity of an idiom. 

By-and-by I made it an irregular habit to accompany him on theseshepherdings; to join him in his simple midday meal of sour brown breadand goat-milk cheese; to talk with him desultorily, and study him thewhile, inasmuch as he wakened an interest in me that was full ofspeculation. For his was not an imbecility either hereditary orconstitutional. From the first there had appeared to me somethingabnormal in it--a suspension of intelligence only, a frost-bite in thebrain that presently some April breath of memory might thaw out. This wasnot merely conjectural, of course. I had the story of his mental collapsefrom his mother in the early days of my sojourn in Bel-Oiseau; for itcame to pass that a fitful caprice induced me to prolong my stay in theswart little village far into the gracious Swiss summer. 

The "story" I have called it; but it was none. He was out on the hillsone moonlight night, and came home in the early morning mad. That wasall. 

This had happened some eight years before, when he was a lad ofseventeen--a strong, beautiful lad, his mother told me; and with a dreamy"poet's corner" in his brain, she added, but in her own better way ofputting it. She had no shame that her shepherd should be an Endymion. InSwitzerland they still look upon Nature as a respectable pursuit for ayoung man. 

Well, they had thought him possessed of a devil; and his father had atfirst sought to exorcise it with a chamois-hide thong, as Munchausenflogged the black fox out of his skin. But the counter-irritant failed ofits purpose. The devil clung deep, and rent poor Camille with periodicconvulsions of insanity. 

It was noted that his derangement waxed and waned with the monthly moon;that it assumed a virulent character with the passing of the secondquarter, and culminated, as the orb reached its fulness, in a species ofdelirium, during which it was necessary to carefully watch him; that itdiminished with the lessening crescent until it fell away into a quietabeyance of faculties that was but a step apart from the normalintelligence of his kind. At his worst he was a stricken madmanacutely sensitive to impressions; at his best an inoffensive peasant whosaid nothing foolish and nothing wise. 

When he was twenty, his father died, and Camille and his mother had tomake out existence in company. 

Now, the veil, in my first knowledge of him, was never rent; yetoccasionally it seemed to me to gape in a manner that let a littlemomentary finger of light through, in the flashing of which a soulkindled and shut in his eyes, like a hard-dying spark in ashes. I wishedto know what gave life to the spark, and I set to pondering the problem. 

"He was not always thus?" I would say to Madame Barbière. 

"But no, Monsieur, truly. This place--bah! we are here imbeciles all tothe great world, without doubt; but Camille!--_he_ was by nature of thosewho make the history of cities--a rose in the wilderness. Monsieursmiles?"

"By no means. A scholar, Madame?"

"A scholar of nature, Monsieur; a dreamer of dreams such as they becomewho walk much with the spirits on the lonely mountains. "

"Torrents, and avalanches, and the good material forces of nature, Madamemeans. "

"Ah! Monsieur may talk, but he knows. He has heard the _föhn_ sweep downfrom the hills and spin the great stones off the house-roofs. And one maylook and see nothing, yet the stones go. It is the wind that runs beforethe avalanche that snaps the pine trees; and the wind is the spirit thatcalls down the great snow-slips. "

"But how may Madame who sees nothing; know then a spirit to be abroad?"

"My faith; one may know one's foot is on the wild mint without shiftingone's sole to look. "

"Madame will pardon me. No doubt also one may know a spirit by the smellof sulphur?"

"Monsieur is a sceptic. It comes with the knowledge of cities. Thereare even such in little Bel-Oiseau, since the evil time when they tookto engrossing the contracts of good citizens on the skins of the poorjew-beards that give us flesh and milk. It is horrible as the Tannery ofMeudon. In my young days, Monsieur, such agreements were inscribed uponwood. "

"Quite so, Madame, and entirely to the point. Also one may see from whomCamille inherited his wandering propensities. But for his fall--it wasalways unaccountable?"

"Monsieur, as one trips on the edge of a crevasse and disappears. Hissoul dropped into the frozen cleft that one cannot fathom. "

"Madame will forgive my curiosity. "

"But surely. There was no dark secret in my Camille's life. If the littlehead held pictures beyond the ken of us simple women, the angels paintedthem of a certainty. Moreover, it is that I willingly recount this griefto the wise friend that may know a solution. "

"At least the little-wise can seek for one. "

"Ah, if Monsieur would only find the remedy!"

"It is in the hands of fate. "

Madame crossed herself. 

"Of the _Bon Dieu_, Monsieur. "

At another time Madame Barbière said:--

"It was in such a parched summer as this threatens to be that my Camillecame home in the mists of the morning possessed. He was often out on thesweet hills all night--that was nothing. It had been a full moon, and thewhiteness of it was on his face like leprosy, but his hands were hot withfever. Ah, the dreadful summer! The milk turned sour in the cows' uddersand the tufts of the stone pines on the mountains fell into ashes likeDead Sea fruit. The springs were dried, and the great cascade of Buetfell to half its volume. "

"This cascade; I have never seen it. Is it in the neighbourhood?"

"Of a surety. Monsieur must have passed the rocky ravine that vomits thetorrent, on his way hither. "

"I remember. I will explore it. Camille shall be my guide. "

"Never. "

"And why?"

Madame shrugged her plump shoulders. 

"Who may say? The ways of the afflicted are not our ways. Only I knowthat Camille will never drive his flock to pasture near the lip of thatdark valley. "

"That is strange. Can the place have associations for him connected withhis malady?"

"It is possible. Only the good God knows. "

But _I_ was to know later on, with a little reeling of the reason also. 

 * * * * *

"Camille, I want to see the Cascade de Buet. "

The hunted eyes of the stricken looked into mine with a piercing glanceof fear. 

"Monsieur must not, " he said, in a low voice. 

"And why not?"

"The waters are bad--bad--haunted!"

"I fear no ghosts. Wilt thou show me the way, Camille?"

"I!" The idiot fell upon the grass with a sort of gobbling cry. I thoughtit the prelude to a fit of some sort, and was stepping towards him, whenhe rose to his feet, waved me off and hurried away down the slopehomewards. 

Here was food for reflection, which I mumbled in secret. 

A day or two afterwards I joined Camille at midday on the heights wherehe was pasturing his flocks. He had shifted his ground a little distancewestwards, and I could not find him at once. At last I spied him, hisback to a rock, his hand dabbled for coolness in a little runnel thattrickled at his side. He looked up and greeted me with a smile. He hadconceived an affection for me, this poor lost soul. 

"It will go soon, " he said, referring to the miniature streamlet. "It issafe in the woods; but to-morrow or next day the sun will lap it up ereit can reach the skirt of the shadow above there. A farewell kiss to you, little stream!"

He bent and sipped a mouthful of the clear water. He was in a morereasonable state than he had shown for long, though it was now closeon the moon's final quarter, a period that should have marked a moregeneral tenor of placidity in him. The summer solstice, was, however, athand, and the weather sultry to a degree--as it had been, I did not failto remember, the year of his seizure. 

"Camille, " I said, "why to-day hast thou shifted thy ground a little inthe direction of the Buet ravine?"

He sat up at once, with a curious, eager look in his face. 

"Monsieur has asked it, " he said. "It was to impel Monsieur to ask itthat I moved. Does Monsieur seek a guide?"

"Wilt thou lead me, Camille?"

"Monsieur, last night I dreamed and one came to me. Was it my father? Iknow not, I know not. But he put my forehead to his breast, and the evilleft it, and I remembered without terror. 'Reveal the secret to thestranger, ' he said; 'that he may share thy burden and comfort thee; forhe is strong where thou art weak, and the vision shall not scare him. 'Monsieur, wilt thou come?"

He leaped to his feet, and I to mine. 

"Lead on, Camille. I follow. "

He called to the leader of his flock: "Petitjean! stray not, my littleone. I shall be back sooner than the daisies close. " Then he turned to meagain. I noticed a pallid, desperate look in his face, as though he werestrung to great effort; but it was the face of a mindless one still. 

"Do you not fear?" he said, in a whisper; and the apple in his throatseemed all choking core. 

"I fear nothing, " I answered with a smile; yet the still sombreness ofthe woods found a little tremor in my breast. 

"It is good, " he answered, regarding me. "The angel spoke truth. Follow, Monsieur. "

He went off through the trees of a sudden, and I had much ado to keeppace with him. He ran as one urged on by a sure sense of doom, lookingneither to right nor left. His mountain instincts had remained with himwhen memory itself had closed around like a fog, leaving him face to faceand isolated with his one unconfessed point of terror. Swiftly we madeour way, ever slightly climbing, along the rugged hillside, and soonbroke into country very wild and dismal. The pastoral character of thescene lessened and altogether disappeared. The trees grew matted andgrotesquely gnarled, huddling together in menacing battalions--savewhere some plunging rock had burst like a shell, forcing a clearing andstrewing the black moss with a jagged wreck of splinters. Here noflowers crept for warmth, no sentinel marmot turned his little scut witha whistle of alarm to vanish like a red shadow. All was melancholy andsilence and the massed defiance of ever-impending ruin. Storm, andavalanche, and the bitter snap of frost had wrought their havoc year byyear, till an uncrippled branch was a rare distinction. The verysaplings, of stunted growth, bore the air of thieves reared in a rookeryof crime. 

We strode with difficulty in an inhuman twilight through this great darkquickset of Nature, and had paused a moment where the thronging trunksthinned somewhat, when a little mouthing moan came towards us on thecrest of a ripple of wind. My companion stopped on the instant, andclutched my arm, his face twisting with panic. 

"The Cascade, Monsieur!" he shook out in a terrified whisper. 

"Courage, my friend! It is that we come to seek. "

"Ah! My God, yes--it is that! I dare not--I dare not!"

He drew back livid with fear, but I urged him on. 

"Remember the dream, Camille!" I cried. 

"Yes, yes--it was good. Help me, Monsieur, and I will try--yes, I willtry!"

I drew his arm within mine, and together we stumbled on. The undergrowthgrew denser and more fantastic; the murmur filled out, increased andresolved itself into a sound of falling water that ever took shape, andvolume, and depth, till its crash shook the ground at our feet. Then ina moment a white blaze of sky came at us through the trunks, and we burstthrough the fringe of the wood to find ourselves facing the opposite sideof a long cleft in the mountain and the blade's edge of a roaringcataract. 

It shot out over the lip of the fall, twenty feet above us, in a curvelike a scimitar, passed in one sheet the spot where we stood, and divedinto a sunless pool thirty feet below with a thunderous boom. What it mayhave been in full phases of the stream, I know not; yet even now it wassufficiently magnificent to give pause to a dying soul eager to shake offthe restless horror of the world. The flat of its broad blade divided thelofty black walls of a deep and savage ravine, on whose jagged shelvessome starved clumps of rhododendron shook in the wind of the torrent. Far down the narrow gully we could see the passion of water tossing, champed white with the ravening of its jaws, until it took a bend of thecliffs at a leap and rushed from sight. 

We stood upon a little platform of coarse grass and bramble, whose fringedipped and nodded fitfully as the sprinkle caught it. Beyond, the slidingsheet of water looked like a great strap of steel, reeled ceaselessly offa whirling drum pivoted between the hills. The midday sun shot like apiston down the shaft of the valley, painting purple spears and anglesbehind its abutting rocks, and hitting full upon the upper curve of thefall; but half-way down the cataract slipped into shadow. 

My brain sickened with the endless gliding and turmoil of descent, and Iturned aside to speak to my companion. He was kneeling upon the grass, his eyes fixed and staring, his white lips mumbling some crippled memoryof a prayer. He started and cowered down as I touched him on theshoulder. 

"I cannot go, Monsieur; I shall die!"

"What next, Camille? I will go alone, "

"My God, Monsieur! the cave under the fall! It is there the horror is. "

He pointed to a little gap in the fringing bushes with shaking finger. I stole gingerly in the direction he indicated. With every step Itook the awful fascination of the descending water increased uponme. It seemed hideous and abnormal to stand mid-way against aperpendicularly-rushing torrent. Above or below the effect would havebeen different; but here, to look up was to feel one's feet draggingtowards the unseen--to look down and pass from vision of the lip of thefall was to become the waif of a force that was unaccountable. 

I had a battle with my nerves, and triumphed. As I approached the openingin the brambles I became conscious of a certain relief. At a littledistance the cataract had seemed to actually wash in its descent the edgeof the platform. Now I found it to be further away than I had imagined, the ground dropping in a sharp slope to a sort of rocky buttress whichlay obliquely on the slant of the ravine, and was the true margin of thetorrent. Before I essayed the descent, I glanced back at my companion. Hewas kneeling where I had left him, his hands pressed to his face, hisfeatures hidden; but looking back once again, when I had with infinitecaution accomplished the downward climb, I saw that he had crept tothe edge of the slope, and was watching me with wide, terrified eyes. Iwaved my hand to him and turned to the wonderful vision of water thatnow passed almost within reach of my arm. I stood near the point wherethe whole glassy breadth glided at once from sunlight into shadow. Itfell silently, without a break, for only its feet far below trod thethunder. 

Now, as I peered about, I noticed a little cleft in the rocky margin, aminute's climb above me. I was attracted to this by an appearance ofsmoke or steam that incessantly emerged from it, as though some witch'scaldron were simmering alongside the fall. Spray it might be, or thecondensing of water splashed on the granite; but of this I might not besure. Therefore I determined to investigate, and straightway beganclimbing the rocks--with my heart in my mouth, it must be confessed, forthe foothold was undesirable and the way perilous. And all the timeI was conscious that the white face of Camille watched me from above. AsI reached the cleft I fancied I heard a queer sort of gasping sob issuefrom his lips, but to this I could give no heed in the sudden wonder thatbroke upon me. For, lo! it appeared that the cleft led straight to anarrow platform or ledge of rock right underneath the fall itself, butextending how far I could not see, by reason of the steam that filled thepassage, and for which I was unable to account. Footing it carefully andgroping my way, I set step in the little water-curtained chamber andadvanced a pace or two. Suddenly, light grew about me, and a beautifulrose of fire appeared on the wall of the passage in the midst of whatseemed a vitrified scoop in the rock. 

Marvelling, I put out my hand to touch it, and fell back on the narrowfloor with a scream of anguish. An inch farther, and these lines hadnot been written. As it was, the fall caught me by the fingers with thesuck of a cat-fish, and it was only a gigantic wrench that saved me fromslipping off the ledge. The jerk brought my head against the rock with astunning blow, and for some moments I lay dizzy and confused, daringhardly to breathe, and conscious only of a burning and blistering agonyin my right hand. 

At length I summoned courage to gather my limbs together and crawl outthe way I had entered. The distance was but a few paces, yet to traversethese seemed an interminable nightmare of swaying and stumbling. I knowonly one other occasion upon which the liberal atmosphere of the openearth seemed sweeter to my senses when I reached it than it did on this. 

I tumbled somehow through the cleft, and sat down, shaking, upon thegrass of the slope beyond; but, happening to throw myself backwards inthe reeling faintness induced by my fright and the pain of my head, myeyes encountered a sight that woke me at once to full activity. 

Balanced upon the very verge of the slope, his face and neck cranedforward, his jaw dropped, a sick, tranced look upon his features, stoodCamille. I saw him topple, and shouted to him; but before my voice waswell out, he swayed, collapsed, and came down with a running thud thatshook the ground. Once he wheeled over, like a shot rabbit, and, boundingthwack with his head against a flat boulder not a dozen yards from me, lay stunned and motionless. 

I scrambled to him, quaking all over. His breath came quick, and a spirtof blood jerked from a sliced cut in his forehead at every pump of hisheart. 

I kicked out a wad of cool moist turf, and clapped it in a pad over thewound, my handkerchief under. For his body, he was shaken and bruised, but otherwise not seriously hurt. 

Presently he came to himself; to himself in the best sense of theword--for Camille was sane. 

I have no explanation to offer. Only I know that, as a fall will set along-stopped watch pulsing again, the blow here seemed to have restoredthe misplaced intellect to its normal balance. 

When he woke, there was a new soft light of sanity in his eyes that waspathetic in the extreme. 

"Monsieur, " he whispered, "the terror has passed. "

"God be thanked! Camille, " I answered, much moved. 

He jerked his poor battered head in reverence. 

"A little while, " he said, "and I shall know. The punishment was just. "

"What punishment, my poor Camille?"

"Hush! The cloud has rolled away. I stand naked before _le bon Dieu_. Monsieur, lift me up; I am strong. "

I winced as I complied. The palm of my hand was scorched and blistered ina dozen places. He noticed at once, and kissed and fondled the woundedlimb as softly as a woman might. 

"Ah, the poor hand!" he murmured. "Monsieur has touched the disc offire. "

"Camille, " I whispered, "what is it?"

"Monsieur shall know--ah! yes, he shall know; but not now. Monsieur, mymother. "

"Thou art right, good son. "

I bound up his bruised forehead and my own burnt hand as well as I wasable, and helped him to his feet. He stood upon them staggering; butin a minute could essay to stumble on the homeward journey withassistance. It was a long and toilsome progress; but in time weaccomplished it. Often we had to sit down in the blasted woods and restawhile; often moisten our parched mouths at the runnels of snow-waterthat thridded the undergrowth. The shadows were slanting eastwardsas we reached the clearing we had quitted some hours earlier, and thegoats had disappeared. Petitjean was leading his charges homewards indefault of a human commander, and presently we overtook them browsinglyloitering and desirous of definite instructions. 

I pass over Camille's meeting with his mother, and the wonder, and fear, and pity of it all. Our hurts were attended to, and the battery ofquestions met with the best armour of tact at command. For myself, Isaid that I had scorched my hand against a red-hot rock, which wasstrictly true; for Camille, that it were wisest to take no earlyadvantage of the reason that God had restored to him. She was voluble, tearful, half-hysterical with joy and the ecstasy of gratitude. 

"That a blow should effect the marvel! Monsieur, but it passescomprehension. "

All night long I heard her stirring and sobbing softly outside his door, for I slept little, owing to pain and the wonder in my mind. But towardsmorning I dozed, and my dreams were feverish and full of terror. 

The next day Camille kept his bed and I my room. By this I at leastescaped the first onset of local curiosity, for the villagers naturallymade of Camille's restoration a nine-days' wonder. But towards eveningMadame Barbière brought a message from him that he would like to seeMonsieur alone, if Monsieur would condescend to visit him in his room. Iwent at once, and found him, as Haydon found Keats, lying in a white bed, hectic, and on his back. He greeted me with a smile peculiarly sweet andrestful. 

"Does Monsieur wish to know?" he said in a low voice. 

"If it will not hurt thee, Camille. "

"Not now--not now; the good God has made me sound. I remember, and am notterrified. "

I closed the door and took a seat by his bedside. There, with my handshading my eyes from the level glory of sunset that flamed into the room, I listened to the strange tale of Camille's seizure. 

 * * * * *

"Once, Monsieur, I lived in myself and was exultant with a loneliness offancied knowledge. My youth was my excuse; but God could not pardon meall. I read where I could find books, and chance put an evil choice in myway, for I learned to sneer at His name, His heaven, His hell. Each manhas his god in self-will, I thought in my pride, and through it alone heaccepts the responsibility of life and death. He is his own curse orblessing here and hereafter, inheriting no sin and earning no doom butsuch as he himself inflicts upon himself. I interpret this from the worldabout me, and knowing it, I have no fear and own no tyrant but my ownpassions. Monsieur, it was through fear the most terrible that Godasserted Himself to me. "

The light was fading in the west, and a lance of shadow fell upon thewhite bed, as though the hushed day were putting a finger to its lips asit withdrew. 

"I was no coward then, Monsieur--that at least I may say. I lived amongthe mountains, and on their ledges the feet of my own goats were notsurer. Often, in summer, I spent the night among the woods and hills, reading in them the story of the ages, and exploring, exploring till myfeet were wearier than my brain. Strangers came from far to see the greatcascade; but none but I--and you, too, Monsieur, now--know the trackthrough the thicket that leads to the cave under the waters. I found itby chance, and, like you, was scorched by the fire, though not badly. "

"Camille--the cause?"

"Monsieur, I will tell you a wonderful thing. The falling waters theremake a monstrous burning glass, when the hot sun is upon them, which hasmelted the rock behind like wax. "

"Can that be so?"

"It is true--dear Jesus, I have fearful reason to know it. "

He half rose on his elbow, his face, crossed by the bandage, grey asstone in the gathering dusk. Hereafter he spoke in an awed whisper. 

"When the knowledge broke upon me, I grew great to myself in thepossession of a wonderful secret. Day after day I visited the cave andexamined this phenomenon--and yet another more marvellous in itsconnection with the first. The huge lens was a simple accident of curvedrocks and convex water, planed smooth as crystal. In other than adroughty summer it would probably not exist; the spouting torrent wouldoverwhelm it--but I know not. Was not this astonishing enough? Yet Naturehad worked a second miracle to mock in anticipation the self-sufficientplagiarism of little man. I noticed that the rays of the sun concentratedin the lens only during the half-hour of the orb's apparent crossing ofthe ravine. Then the light smote upon a strange curved little fan ofwater, that spouted from a high crevice at the mouth of the shallowvitrified tunnel, and devoured it, and played upon the rocks behind, thathissed and sputtered like pitch, and the place was blind with steam. Butwhen the tooth of fire was withdrawn, the tiny inner cascade fell againand wrought coolness with its sprinkling. 

"I did not discover this all at once, for at first fright took me, and itwas enough to watch for the moment of the light's appearance and thenflee with a little laughter. But one day I ventured back into the caveafter the sun had crossed the valley, and the steam had died away, andthe rock cooled behind the miniature cascade. 

"I looked through the lens, and it seemed full of a great white lightthat blazed into my eyes, so that I fell back through the inner fan ofwater and was well soused by it; but my sight presently recovering, Istood forward in the scoop of rock admiring the dainty hollow curve thefan took in its fall. By-and-by I became aware that I was looking outthrough a smaller lens upon the great one, and that strange whirlingmists seemed to be sweeping across a huge disc, within touch of my handalmost. 

"It was long before I grasped the meaning of this; but, in a flash, itcame upon me. The great lens formed the object glass, the small, theeyeglass, of a natural telescope of tremendous power, that drew the highsummer clouds down within seeming touch and opened out the heavens beforemy staring eyes. 

"Monsieur, when this dawned upon me I was wild. That so astonishing adiscovery should have been reserved for a poor ignorant Swiss peasantfilled me with pride wicked in proportion with its absence of gratitudeto the mighty dispenser of good. I came even to think my individualitypart of the wonder and necessary to its existence. 'Were it not for mycourage and enterprise, ' I cried, 'this phenomenon would have remained asecret of the Nature that gave birth to it. She yields her treasures tosuch only as fear not. '

"I had read in a book of Huyghens, Guinand, Newton, Herschel--the greathigh-priests of science who had striven through patient years to read thehieroglyphics of the heavens. 'The wise imbeciles, ' I thought. 'Theytoiled and died, and Nature held no mirror up to them. For me, thepoor Camille, she has worked in secret while they grew old and passedunsatisfied. '

"Brilliant projects of astronomy whirled in my brain. The evening of mylast discovery I remained out on the hills, and entered the cave as itgrew dusk. A feeling of awe surged in me as dark fell over the valley, and the first stars glistened faintly. I dipped under the fan of waterand took my stand in the hollow behind it. There was no moon, but mytelescope was inclined, as it were, at a generous angle, and a section ofthe firmament was open before me. My heart beat fast as I looked throughthe lens. 

"Shall I tell you what I saw then and many nights after? Rings andcrosses in the heavens of golden mist, spangled, as it seemed, withjewels; stars as big as cart-wheels, twinkling points no longer, butround, like great bosses of molten fire; things shadowy, luminous, ofstrange colours and stranger forms, that seemed to brush the watersas they passed, but were in reality vast distances away. 

"Sometimes the thrust of wind up the ravine would produce a tremulousmotion in the image at the focus of the mirror; but this was seldom. For the most part the wonderful lenses presented a steady curvature, notflawless, but of magnificent capacity. 

"Now it flashed upon me that, when the moon was at the full, she wouldtop the valley in the direct path of my telescope's range of view. Atthe thought I grew exultant. I--I, little Camille, should first readaright the history of this strange satellite. The instrument that couldgive shape to the stars would interpret to me the composition of thatlonely orb as clearly as though I stood upon her surface. 

"As the time of her fulness drew near I grew feverish with excitement. Iwas sickening, as it were, to my madness, for never more should I lookupon her willingly, with eyes either speculative or insane. "

At this point Camille broke off for a little space, and lay back on hispillow. When he spoke again it was out of the darkness, with his faceturned to the wall. 

"Monsieur, I cannot dwell upon it--I must hasten. We have no right topeer beyond the boundary God has drawn for us. I saw His hell--I saw Hishell, I tell you. It is peopled with the damned--silent, horrible, distorted in the midst of ashes and desolation. It was a memory that, like the snake of Aaron, devoured all others till yesterday--tillyesterday, by Christ's mercy. "

 * * * * *

It seemed to me, as the days wore on, that Camille had but recovered hisreason at the expense of his life; that the long rest deemed necessaryfor him after his bitter period of brain exhaustion might in the endprove an everlasting one. Possibly the blow to his head had, in expellingthe seven devils, wounded beyond cure the vital function that hadfostered them. He lay white, patient, and sweet-tempered to all, butmoved by no inclination to rise and re-assume the many-coloured garmentof life. 

His description of the dreadful desert in the sky I looked upon, merely, as an abiding memory of the brain phantasm that had finally overthrowna reason, already tottering under the tremendous excitement induced byhis discovery of the lenses, and the magnified images they had presentedto him. That there was truth in the asserted fact of the existence ofthese, my own experience convinced me; and curiosity as to this aloneimpelled me to the determination of investigating further, when my handshould be sufficiently recovered to act as no hindrance to me in forcingmy way once more through the dense woods that bounded the waterfall. Moreover, the dispassionate enquiry of a mind less sensitive toimpressions might, in the result, do more towards restoring the warpedimagination of my friend to its normal state than any amount of spokenscepticism. 

To Camille I said nothing of my resolve; but waited on, chafing at theslow healing of my wounds. In the meantime the period of the fullmoon approached, and I decided, at whatever cost, to make the venture onthe evening she topped her orbit, if circumstances at the worst shouldprevent my doing so sooner--and thus it turned out. 

On the eve of my enterprise, the first fair spring of rain in a droughtof two months fell, to my disappointment, among the hills; for I fearedan increase of the torrent and the effacement of the mighty lens. I setoff, however, on the afternoon of the following day, in hot sunshine, mentally prognosticating a favourable termination to my expedition, andtelling Madame Barbière not to expect me back till late. 

In leisurely fashion I made my way along the track we had previouslytraversed, risking no divergence through overhaste, and carefullyexamining all landmarks before deciding on any direction. Thus slowlyproceeding, I had the good fortune to come within sound of the cataractas the sun was sinking behind the mountain ridges to my front; andpresently emerged from the woods at the very spot we had struck in ourformer journey together. 

A chilly twilight reigned in the ravine, and the noise that came up fromthe ruin of the torrent seemed doubly accented by reason of it. Thesound of water moving in darkness has always conveyed to me an impressionof something horrible and deadly, be it nothing of more moment thanthe drip and hollow tinkle of a gutter pipe. But the crash in thisechoing gorge was appalling indeed. 

For some moments I stood on the brink of the slope, looking across at thegreat knife of the fall, with a little shiver of fear. Then I shookmyself, laughed, and without further ado took my courage in hand, andscrambled down the declivity and up again towards the cleft in the rocks. 

Here the chill of heart gripped me again--the watery sliding tunnellooked so evil in the contracting gloom. A false step in that humidchamber, and my bones would pound and crackle on the rocks forty feetbelow. It must be gone through with now, however; and, taking a longbreath, I set foot in the passage under the curving downpour that seemedtaut as an arched muscle. 

Reaching the burnt recess, a few moments sufficed to restore myself-confidence; and without further hesitation I dived under the innerlittle fan-shaped fall--which was there, indeed, as Camille had describedit--and recovered my balance with pulses drumming thicker than I couldhave desired. 

In a moment I became conscious that some great power was before me. Across a vast, irregular disc filled with the ashy whiteness of the outertwilight, strange, unaccountable forms, misty and undefined, passed, andrepassed, and vanished. Cirrus they might have been, or the shadows flungby homing flights of birds; but of this I could not be certain. As thedusk deepened they showed no more, and presently I gazed only into aviolet fathomless darkness. 

My own excitement now was great; and I found some difficulty in keepingit under control. But for the moment, it seemed to me, I pined greatlyfor free commune with the liberal atmosphere of earth. Therefore, Idipped under the little fall and made my cautious way to the margin ofthe cataract. 

I was surprised to find for how long a time the phenomenon had absorbedme. The moon was already high in the heavens, and making towardsthe ravine with rapid steps. Far below, the tumbling waters flashed inher rays, and on all sides great tiers of solemn, trees stood up atattention to salute her. 

When her disc silvered the inner rim of the slope I had descended, Ireturned to my post of observation with tingling nerves. The field ofthe great object lens was already suffused with the radiance of herapproach. 

Suddenly my pupils shrank before the apparition of a ghastly grey light, and all in a moment I was face to face with a segment of desolationmore horrible than any desert. Monstrous growths of leprosy that hadbubbled up and stiffened; fields of ashen slime--the sloughing of a worldof corruption; hills of demon, fungus swollen with the fatness ofputrefaction; and, in the midst of all, dim, convulsed shapes wallowing, protruding, or stumbling aimlessly onwards, till they sank anddisappeared. 

 * * * * *

Madame Barbière threw up her hands when she let me in at the door. Myappearance, no doubt, was ghastly. I knew not the hour nor the lapseof time covered by my wanderings about the hills, my face hidden in mypalms, a drawn feeling about my heart, my lips muttering--mutteringfragments of prayers, and my throat jerking with horrible laughter. 

For hours I lay face downwards on my bed. 

"Monsieur has seen it?"

"I have seen it. "

"I heard the rain on the hills. The lens will have been blurred. Monsieurhas been spared much. "

"God, in His mercy, pity thee! And me--oh, Camille, and me too!"

"He has held out His white hand to me. I go, when I go, with a safeconduct. "

 * * * * *

He went before the week was out. The drought had broken and for five daysthe thunder crashed and the wild rain swept the mountains. On themorning of the sixth a drenched shepherd reported in the village that alandslip had choked the fall of Buet, and completely altered its shape. Madame Barbière broke into the room where I was sitting with Camille, bigwith the news. She little guessed how it affected her listeners. 

"The _bon Dieu_" said Camille, when she had gone, "has thundered Hiscurse on Nature for revealing His secrets. I, who have penetrated intothe forbidden, must perish. "

"And I, Camille?"

He turned to me with a melancholy sweet smile, and answered, paraphrasingthe dying words of certain noble lips, --

"Be good, Monsieur; be good. "

JACK AND JILL

My friend, Monsieur ----, absolutely declines to append his name to thesepages, of which he is the virtual author. Nevertheless, he permits me topublish them anonymously, being, indeed, a little curious to ascertainwhat would have been the public verdict as to his sanity, had he givenhis personal imprimatur to a narrative on the face of it so incredible. 

"How!" he says. "Should I have believed it of another, when I have suchastonishing difficulty at this date in realizing that it was I--yes, I, my friend--this same little callow _poupon_--that was an actual hero ofthe adventure? Fidèle" (by which term we cover the identity of hiswife)--"Fidèle will laugh in my face sometimes, crying, 'Not thou, littlecabbage, nor yet thy faithful, was it that dived through half the worldand came up breathless! No, no--I cannot believe it. We folk, somatter-of-fact and so comical. It was of Hansel and Gretel we had beenreading hand-in-hand, till we fell asleep in the twilight and fanciedthis thing. ' And then she will trill like a bird at the thought of howsolemn Herr Grabenstock, of the Hôtel du Mont Blanc, would have staredand edged apart, had we truly recounted to him that which had befallen usbetween the rising and the setting of a sun. We go forth; it rains--myfaith! as it will in the Chamounix valley--and we return in the eveningsopped. Very natural. But, for a first cause of our wetting. Ah! there wemust be fastidious of an explanation, or we shall find ourselves in perilof restraint. 

"Now, write this for me, and believe it if you can. We are not in aconspiracy of imagination--I and the dear courageous. "

Therefore I _do_ write it, speaking in the person of Monsieur ----, andlargely from his dictation; and my friend shall amuse himself over thenature of its reception. 

 * * * * *

"One morning (it was in late May), " says Monsieur ----, "my Fidèle and Ileft the Hôtel du Mont Blanc for a ramble amongst the hills. We were alittle adventurous, because we were innocent. We took no guide but ourcommonsense; and that served us very ill--or very well, according to thepoint of view. Ours was that of the birds, singing to the sky andcareless of the snake in the grass so long as they can pipe their tune. Of a surety that is the only course. If one would make provision againstevery chance of accident, one must dematerialize. To die is the only wayto secure oneself from fatality. 

"Still, it is a wise precaution, I will admit, not to eat of all hedgefruit because blackberries are sweet. Some day, after the fiftiethstomach-ache, we shall learn wisdom, my Fidèle and I. 

"'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. ' That, I know, comes into theEnglish gospel. 

"Well, I will tell you, I am content to be considered of the first; andmy Fidèle is assuredly of the second. Yet did she fear, or I rush in? Onthe contrary, I have a little laughing thought that it was the angelinveighed against the dulness of caution when the fool would havehesitated. 

"Now, it was before the season of the Alps; and the mountain aubergisteswere, for the most part, not arrived at their desolate hill-taverns. Norwere guides at all in evidence, being yet engaged, the sturdy souls, overtheir winter occupations. One, no doubt, we could have procured, had wewished it; but we did not. We would explore under the aegis of nocicerone but our curiosity. That was native to us, if the district wasstrange. 

"Following, at first, the instructions of Herr Baedeker, we travelled andclimbed, chattering and singing as we went, in the direction of theMontenvert, whence we were to descend upon the Mer de Glace, and enjoythe spectacle of a stupendous glacier. 

"'And that, I am convinced, ' said Fidèle, 'is nothing more nor less thanone of those many windows that give light to the monsters of theunder-earth. '

"'Little imbecile! In some places this window is six hundred feet thick. '

"'So?' she said. 'That is because their dim eyes could not endure thefull light of the sun. '

"We had brought a tin box of sandwiches with us; and this, with my largepewter flask full of wine, was slung upon my back. For we had been toldthe Hôtel du Montenvert was yet closed; and, sure enough when we reachedit, the building stood black in a pool of snow, its shuttered windowsforlorn, and long icicles hung from the eaves. 

"The depression induced by this sight was momentary. We turned from it tothe panorama of majestic loveliness that stretched below and around us. The glacier--that rolling sea of glass--descended from the enormous gatesof the hills. Its source was the white furnace of the skies; itssubstance the crystal refuse of the stars; and from its margins thesplintered peaks stood up in a thousand forms of beauty. Right and left, in the hollows of the mountains, the mist lay like ponds, opal andtranslucent; and the shafts of the pine trees standing in it looked likethe reflections of themselves. 

"It made the eyes ache--this silence of greatness; and it became a reliefto shift one's gaze to the reality of one's near neighbourhood--thegrass, and the rhododendron bushes, and even the dull walls of thedeserted auberge. 

"A narrow path dipped over the hill-side and fled into the very jaws ofthe moraine. Down the first of this path we raced, hand in hand; butsoon, finding the impetus overmastering us, we pulled up with difficulty, and descended the rest of the way circumspectly. 

"At the foot of the steep slope we came upon the little wooden hutchwhere, ordinarily, one may procure a guide (also rough socks to stretchover one's boots) for the passage of the glacier. Now, however, the shedwas closed and tenantless; and we must e'en dispense with a conductor, should we adventure further. 

"Herr Baedeker says, 'Guide unnecessary for the experienced. '

"'Fidèle, are we experienced?'

"'We shall be, _mon ami_, when we have crossed. A guide could not alterthat. '

"'But it is true, _ma petite_. Come, then!'

"We clambered down amongst huge stones. Fidèle's little feet went in andout of the crannies like sand-martins. Suddenly, before we realized it, we were on the glacier. 

"Fidèle exclaimed. 

"'_Mon Dieu_! Is this ice--these blocks of dirty alabaster?'

"Alas! she was justified. This torrent of majestic crystal--seen fromabove so smooth and bountiful--a flood of the milk of Nature dispensedfrom the white bosom of the hills! Now, near at hand, what do we find it?A medley of opaque blocks, smeared with grit and rubbish; a vast ruin ofavalanches hurled together and consolidated, and of the colour of rocksalt. 

"'_Peste!_' I cried. 'We must get to the opposite bank, for all that. 

"_Mignonne, allons voir si la rose, Qui ce matin avoit desclose_. . . . '"

"We clasped hands and set forth on our little traversée, our landmark anodd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple. The _paveurs_ of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all. Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouthof a sole. Going glibly, we learnt a small lesson of caution therefrom. Six paces, and we should have tumbled in. 

"We looked over fearfully. Here, in truth, was real ice at last--green asbottle-glass at the edges, and melting into unfathomable deeps of glowingblue. 

"In a moment, with a shriek like that of escaping steam, a windy demonleapt at us from the underneath. It was all of winter in a breath. Itseemed to shrivel the skin from our faces--the flesh from our bones. Westaggered backwards. 

"'_Mon ami! mon ami_!' cried Fidèle, 'my heart is a stone; my eyes aretwo blisters of water!'

"We danced as the blood returned unwilling to our veins. It was minutesbefore we could proceed. 

"Afterwards I learned that these hellish eruptions of air betoken achange of temperature. It was coming then shortly in a dense rainfall. 

"When we were recovered, we sought about for a way to circumambulate thecrevasse. Then we remarked that up a huge boulder of ice that hadseemed to block our path recent steps, or toe-holes, had been cut. In atwinkling we were over. Fidèle--no, a woman never falls. 

"'For all this, ' she says, shaking her head, 'I maintain that a guidehere is a sinecurist. '

"Well, we made the passage safely, and toiled up the steep, loose morainebeyond--to find the track over which was harder than crossing theglacier. But we did it, and struck the path along the hillside, whichleads by the _Mauvais Pas_ (the _mauvais quart d'heure_) to the littlecabaret called the _Chapeau_. This tavern, too, was shut and dismal. It did not matter. We sat like sparrows on a railing, and munched ouregg-sandwiches and drank our wine in a sort of glorious stupefaction. Forright opposite us was the vast glacier-fall, whose crashing foam wastowers and parapets of ice, that went over and rolled into the valleybelow, a ruin of thunder. 

"Far beyond, where the mouth of the gorge spread out littered withmonstrous destruction, we saw the hundred threads of the glacier streamscollect into a single rope of silver, that went drawn between the hills, a highway of water. It was all a majestic panorama of grey and pearlywhite--the sky, the torrents, the mountains; but the blue and rusty greenof the stone pines, flung abroad in hanging woods and coppices, broke upand distributed the infinite serenity of the snow fields. 

"Presently, having drunk deep of rich content, we rose to retrace oursteps. For, spurred by vanity, we must be returning the way we had come, to show our confident experience of glaciers. 

"All went well. Actually we had passed over near two-thirds of theice-bed, when a touch on my arm stayed me, and _ma mie_ looked into myeyes, very comical and insolent. 

"'Little cabbage, ' she said; 'will you not put your new knowledge toaccount?'

"'But how, my soul?'

"She laughed and pressed my arm to her side. Her heart fluttered like anestling after its first flight. 

"'To rest on the little prowess of a small adventure! No, no! Shall hewho has learnt to swim be always content to bathe in shallow water?'

"I was speechless as I gazed on her. 

"'Behold, then!' she cried. 'We have opposed ourselves to this problem ofthe ice, and we have mastered it. See how it rears itself to theinaccessible peaks, the which to reach the poor innocents expendthemselves over rocks and drifts. But why should one not climb themountain by way of the glacier?'

"'Fidèle!' I gasped. 

"'Ah!' she exclaimed, nodding her head; 'but poor men! They are mules. They spill their blood on the scaling ladders when the town gate isopen. '

"Again I cried 'Fidèle!'

"'But, yes, ' she said, 'it needs a woman to see. It is but two o'clock. Let us ascend the glacier, like a staircase; and presently we shall standupon the summit of the mountain. Those last little peaks above the icecan be of no importance. '

"I was touched, astounded by the sublimity of her idea. Had no one, then, ever thought of this before?

"We began the ascent. 

"I swear we must have toiled upwards half a mile, when the catastrophetook place. 

"It was raining then--a dense small mist; and the ice was as if ithad been greased. We were proceeding with infinite care, arm in arm, tucked close together. A little doubt, I think, was beginning to oppressus. We could move only with much caution and difficulty; and there werenoises--sounds like the clapping of great hands in those rocky atticsabove us. Then there would come a slamming report, as if the window ofthe unknown had been burst open by demons; and the moans of the lostwould issue, surging down upon the world. 

"These thunders, as we were afterwards told, are caused by the splittingof the ice when there comes a fall in the barometer. Then the glacierwill yawn like a sliced junket. 

"My faith! what a simile! But again the point of view, my friend. 

"All in a moment I heard a little cluck. I looked down. Alas! the finespirit was obscured. Fidèle was weeping. 

"'_Chut! chut!_' I exclaimed in consternation. 'We will go back at once. '

"She struggled to smile, the poor _mignonne_. 

"'It is only that my knees are sick, ' she said piteously. 

"I took her in my strong arms tenderly. 

"We had paused on a ridge of hard snow. 

"There came a tearing clang--an enormous sucking sound, as of wet lipsopening. The snow sank under our feet. 

"'My God!' shrieked Fidèle. 

"I held her convulsively. It happened in an instant, before one couldleap aside. The bed of snow on which we were standing broke down intothe crevasse it had bridged, and let us through to the depths. 

"Will you believe what follows? Pinch your nose and open your mouth. Youshall take the whole draught at a breath. _The ice at the point where weentered was five hundred feet thick; and we fell to the very bottom ofit. _

"Ha! ha! Is it difficult to swallow? But it is true--it is quite true. Here I sit, sound and safe, and eminently sane, and that after a fall offive hundred feet. 

"Now, listen. 

"We went down, welded together, with a rush and a buzz like acannon-ball. Thoughts? Ah! my friend, I had none. Who can think evenin a high wind? And here the wind of our going would have brained an ox. Only one desperate instinct I had, one little forlorn remnant ofhumanity--to shield the love of my heart. So my arms never left her; andwe fell together. I dreaded nothing, feared nothing, foresaw no terrorin the inevitable mangling crash of the end. For time, that is necessaryto emotion, was annihilated. We had outstripped it, and left sense andreason sluggishly following in our wake. 

"Sense, yes; but not altogether sensation. Flashingly I was conscioushere of incredibly swift transitions, from cold to deeper wells of frost;thence down through a stratum of death and negation, between mere blindwalls of frigid inhumanity, to have been stayed a moment by which wouldhave pointed all our limbs as stiff as icicles, as stiff as those offrogs plunged into boiling water. But we passed and fell, still crashingupon no obstruction; and thought pursued us, tailing further behind. 

"It was the passage of the eternal night--frozen, self-contained; awfulas any fancied darkness that is without one tradition of a star. Yet, struggling hereafter to, in some shadowy sense, renew my feelings of themoment, it seemed to me that I had not fallen through darkness at all;but rather that the friction of descent had kindled an inner radiance inme that was independent of the vision of the eyes, and full of promise ofa sudden illumination of the soul. 

"Now, after falling what depths God knows, I become numbly aware of alittle griding sensation at my back, that communicated a whistling smallvibration to my whole frame. This intensified, became more pronounced. Perceptibly, in that magnificent refinement of speed, our enormous pace Ifelt to decrease ever so little. Still we had so far outstrippedintelligence as that I was incapable of considering the cause of thechange. 

"Suddenly, for the first time, pain made itself known; and immediatelyreason, plunging from above, overtook me, and I could think. 

"Then it was I became conscious that, instead of falling, we wererising, rising with immense swiftness, but at a pace that momentlyslackened--rising, slipping over ice and in contact with it, "The muscles of my arms, clasped still about Fidèle, involuntarilyswelled to her. My God! there was a tiny answering pressure. I could havescreamed with joy; but physical anguish overmastered me. My back seemedbursting into flame. 

"The suffering was intolerable. When, at last, I thought I should go mad, in a moment we took a surging swoop, shot down an easy incline, and_stopped_. 

"There had been noise in our descent, as only now I knew by itscessation--a hissing sound as of wire whirring from a draw-plate. In theprofound enormous silence that, at last, enwrapped us, the bliss offreedom from that metallic accompaniment fell on me like a balm. Myeyelids closed. Possibly I fainted. 

"All in a moment I came to myself, to an undefinable sense of thetremendous pressure of nothingness. Darkness! it was not that; yet it wasas little light. It was as if we lay in a dim, luminous chaos, ourselvesan integral part of its self-containment. I did not stir; but I spoke:and my strange voice broke the enchantment. Surely never before or sincewas speech exchanged under such conditions. 

"'Fidèle!'

"'I can speak, but I cannot look. If I hide so for ever I can diebravely. '

"'_Ma petite!_ oh, my little one! Are you hurt?'

"'I don't know. I think not. '

"Her voice, her dear voice was so odd; but, _Mon Dieu_! how wonderful inits courage! That, Heaven be praised! is no monopoly of intellect. Indeed, it is imagination that makes men cowards; and to the lack of thispossibly we owed our salvation. 

"Now, calm and freed of that haunting jar of descent, I became consciousthat a sound, that I had at first taken for the rush of my own arteries, had an origin apart from us. It was like the wash and thunder of watersin a deep sewer. 

"'Fidèle!' I said again. 

"'I am listening. '

"'Hear, then! Canst thou free my right arm, that I may feel for thelucifers in my pocket?'

"She moved at once, never raising her face from my breast. I groped forthe box, found it; and manipulating with one hand, succeeded in strikinga match. It flamed up--a long wax vesta. 

"A glory of sleek fires sprang on the instant into life. We layimprisoned in a house of glass at the foot of a smooth incline risingbehind us to unknown heights. A wall of porous and opaque ice-rubbish, into which our feet had plunged deep, had stayed our progress. 

"I placed the box by my side ready for use. Our last moments should belavish of splendour. Stooping for another match, to kindle from the flameof the near-expired one, a thought struck me. Why had we not been at oncefrozen to death? Yet we lay where we had brought up, as snug and glowingas if we were wrapped in bedclothes. 

"The answer came to me in a flash. We had fallen sheer to the glacierbed, which, warmed by subterraneous heat, was ever in process of melting. Possibly, but a comparatively thin curtain of perforated ice separated usfrom the under torrent. 

"The enforced conclusion was astounding; but as yet it inspired no hope. We were none the less doomed and buried. 

"I lit a second match, turned about, and gave a start of terror. There, imbedded in the transparent wall at my very shoulder, was something--thebody of a man. 

"A horrible sight--a horrible, horrible sight--crushed, flattened--acaricature; the very gouts of blood that had burst from him held poisedin the massed congelations of water. 

"For how long ages had he been travelling to the valley, and from whatheights? He was of a bygone generation, by his huge coat cuffs, his metalbuttons, by his shoe buckles and the white stockings on his legs, whichwere pressed thin and sharp, as if cut out of paper. Had he been aclimber, an explorer--a contemporary, perhaps, of Saussure and a rival?And what had been his unrecorded fate? To slip into a crevasse, and sofor the parted ice to snap upon him again, like a hideous jaw? Its workdone, it might at least have opened and dropped him through--not held himintact to jog us, out of all that world of despair, with his batteredelbow!

"Perhaps to witness in others the fate he had himself suffered!

"I dropped the match I was holding. I tightened my clasp convulsivelyabout Fidèle. Thank God she, at any rate, was blind to this horror withina horror!

"All at once--was it the start I had given, or the natural process ofdissolution beneath our feet?--we were moving again. Swift--swifter!Fidèle uttered a little moaning cry. The rubbish of ice crashed below us, and we sank through. 

"I knew nothing, then, but that we were in water--that we had fallen froma little height, and were being hurried along. The torrent, now deep, nowso shallow that my feet scraped its bed, gushed in my ears and blinded myeyes. 

"Still I hugged Fidèle, and I could feel by her returning grasp that shelived. The water was not unbearably cold as yet. The air that camethrough cracks and crevasses had not force to overcome the under warmth. 

"I felt something slide against me--clutched and held on. It was a bravepine log. Could I recover it at this date I would convert it into aflagstaff for the tricolour. It was our raft, our refuge; and it carriedus to safety. 

"I cannot give the extravagant processes of that long journey. It was alla rushing, swirling dream--a mad race of mystery and sublimity, towhich the only conscious periods were wild, flitting glimpses ofwonderful ice arabesques, caught momentarily as we passed under fissuresthat let the light of day through dimly. 

"Gradually a ghostly radiance grew to encompass us; and by a likegradation the water waxed intensely cold. Hope then was blazing in ourhearts; but this new deathliness went nigh to quench it altogether. Yet, had we guessed the reason, we could have foregone the despair. For, intruth, we were approaching that shallower terrace of the glacier beyondthe fall, through which the light could force some weak passage, and theair make itself felt, blowing upon the beds of ice. 

"Well, we survived; and still we survive. My faith, what a couple!Sublimity would have none of us. The glacier rejected souls socommonplace as not to be properly impressed by its inexorability. 

"This, then, was the end. We swept into a huge cavern of ice--throughit--beyond it, into the green valley and the world that we love. Andthere, where the torrent splits up into a score of insignificant streams, we grounded and crawled to dry land and sat down and laughed. 

"Yes, we could do it--we could laugh. Is that not bathos? But Fidèle andI have a theory that laughter is the chief earnest of immortality. 

"To _dry_ land I have said. _Mon Dieu!_ the torrent was no wetter. Itrains in the Chamounix valley. We looked to see whence we had fallen, andnot even the _Chapeau_ was visible through the mist. 

"But, as I turned, Fidèle uttered a little cry. 

"'The flask, and the sandwich-box, and your poor coat!'

"'_Comment?_' I said; and in a moment was in my shirt-sleeves. 

"I stared, and I wondered, and I clucked in my throat. 

"Holy saints! I was adorned with a breastplate on my back. The frictionof descent, first welding together these, the good ministers to ourappetite, had worn the metal down in the end to a mere skin or badge, theheat generated from which had scorched and frizzled the cloth beneath it. 

"I needed not to seek further explanation of the pain I had suffered--wassuffering then, indeed, as I had reason to know when ecstasy permitted areturn of sensation. My back bears the scars at this moment. 

"'It shall remain there for ever!' I cried, 'like the badge of a _cocherde fiacre_, who has made the fastest journey on record. 'Coachman! fromthe glacier to the valley. ' '_Mais oui, monsieur_. Down this crevasse, ifyou please. '

"And that is the history of our adventure. 

"Why we were not dashed to pieces? But that, as I accept it, is easy ofelucidation. Imagine a vast crescent moon, with a downward nick from theend of the tail. This form the fissure took, in one enormous sweep anddrop towards the mouth of the valley. Now, as we rushed headlong, thegentle curve received us from space to substance quite gradually, untilwe were whirring forward wholly on the latter, my luggage suffering thebrunt of the friction. The upward sweep of the crescent diminished ourprogress--more and yet more--until we switched over the lower point andshot quietly down the incline beyond. And all this in ample room, andwithout meeting with a single unfriendly obstacle. 

"'_Voilà, mes chers amis, ce qui me met en peine_. '

"Fidèle laughs, the rogue!

"'Ta, ta, ta!' she says. 'But they will not believe a word of it all. '"

THE VANISHING HOUSE

"My grandfather, " said the banjo, "drank 'dog's-nose, ' my father drank'dog's-nose, ' and I drink 'dog's-nose. ' If that ain't heredity, there'sno virtue in the board schools. "

"Ah!" said the piccolo, "you're always a-boasting of your science. Andso, I suppose, your son'll drink 'dog's-nose, ' too?"

"No, " retorted the banjo, with a rumbling laugh, like wind in thebung-hole of an empty cask; "for I ain't got none. The family ends withme; which is a pity, for I'm a full-stop to be proud on. "

He was an enormous, tun-bellied person--a mere mound of expressionlessflesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividendof laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face wasblackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum. 

There was Christmas company in the Good Intent, and the sanded tap-room, with its trestle tables and sprigs of holly stuck under sooty beamsreeked with smoke and the steam of hot gin and water. 

"How much could you put down of a night, Jack?" said a little grinningman by the door. 

"Why, " said the banjo, "enough to lay the dustiest ghost as ever walked. "

"Could you, now?" said the little man. 

"Ah!" said the banjo, chuckling. "There's nothing like settin' one speritto lay another; and there I could give you proof number two of heredity. "

"What! Don't you go for to say you ever see'd a ghost!"

"Haven't I? What are you whisperin' about, you blushful chap there by thewinder?"

"I was only remarking sir, 'twere snawin' like the devil. "

"_Is_ it? Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred andninety odd years. "

"But _did_ you ever see a ghost?" said the little grinning man, pursuinghis subject. 

"No, I didn't, sir, " mimicked the banjo, "saving in coffee grounds. Butmy grandfather in _his_ cups see'd one; which brings us to number threein the matter of heredity. "

"Give us the story, Jack, " said the "bones, " whose agued shins wereextemporizing a rattle on their own account before the fire. 

"Well, I don't mind, " said the fat man. "It's seasonable; and I'mseasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am; and the more burnt brandyyou set about me, the richer and headier I'll go down. "

"You'd be a jolly old pudden to digest, " said the piccolo. 

"You blow your aggrawation into your pipe and sealing-wax the stops, "said his friend. 

He drew critically at his "churchwarden" a moment or so, leaned forward, emptied his glass into his capacious receptacles, and, giving hisstomach a shift, as if to accommodate it to its new burden, proceeded asfollows:--

"Music and malt is my nat'ral inheritance. My grandfather blew his'dog's-nose, ' and drank his clarinet like a artist and my father--"

"What did you say your grandfather did?" asked the piccolo. 

"He played the clarinet. "

"You said he blew his 'dog's-nose. '"

"Don't be a ass, Fred!" said the banjo, aggrieved. "How the blazes coulda man blow his dog's nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, andthen twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my fatherplayed the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerlygenial to him. Amongst us we've piped out a good long century--ah! wehave, for all I look sich a babby bursting on sops and spoon meat. "

"What!" said the little man by the door. "You don't include them cockthatses in your expeerunce?"

"My grandfather wore 'em, sir. He wore a play-actin' coat, too, andbuckles to his shoes, when he'd got any; and he and a friend or two madea permanency of 'waits' (only they called 'em according to the season), and got their profit goin' from house to house, principally in thecountry, and discoursin' music at the low rate of whatever they could getfor it. "

"Ain't you comin' to the ghost, Jack?" said the little man hungrily. 

"All in course, sir. Well, gentlemen, it was hard times pretty often withmy grandfather and his friends, as you may suppose; and never so muchas when they had to trudge it across country, with the nor'-easterbuzzin' in their teeth and the snow piled on their cockt hats like lemonsponge on entry dishes. The rewards, I've heard him say--for he lived tobe ninety, nevertheless--was poor compensation for the drifts, and theinflienza, and the broken chilblains; but now and again they'd get a fairskinful of liquor from a jolly squire, as 'd set 'em up like boggartsmended wi' new broomsticks. "

"Ho-haw!" broke in a hurdle-maker in a corner; and then, regretting thepublicity of his merriment, put his fingers bashfully to his stubblelips. 

"Now, " said the banjo, "it's of a pertikler night and a pertikler skinfulthat I'm a-going to tell you; and that night fell dark, and that skinfulwere took a hundred years ago this December, as I'm a Jack-pudden!"

He paused a moment for effect, before he went on:--

"They were down in the sou'-west country, which they little knew; andwere anighing Winchester city, or should 'a' been. But they got muzzed onthe ungodly downs, and before they guessed, they was off the track. Mygood hat! there they was, as lost in the snow as three nutshellsa-sinkin' into a hasty pudden. Well, they wandered round; prettyconfident at first, but getting madder and madder as every sense of theirbearings slipped from them. And the bitter cold took their vitals, so asthey saw nothing but a great winding sheet stretched abroad for to wraptheir dead carcasses in. 

"At last my grandfather he stopt and pulled hisself together with anawful face, and says he: 'We're Christmas pie for the carrying-on crowsif we don't prove ourselves human. Let's fetch out our pipes and blow ourtrouble into 'em. ' So they stood together, like as if they was before ahouse, and they played 'Kate of Aberdare' mighty dismal and flat, fortheir fingers froze to the keys. 

"Now, I tell you, they hadn't climbed over the first stave, when therecome a skirl of wind and spindrift of snow as almost took them off oftheir feet; and, on the going down of it, Jem Sloke, as played thehautboy, dropped the reed from his mouth, and called out, 'Sakes alive!if we fools ain't been standin' outside a gentleman's gate all the time, and not knowin' it!'

"You might 'a' knocked the three of 'em down wi' a barley straw, as theystared and stared, and then fell into a low, enjoyin' laugh. For they wasstandin' not six fut from a tall iron gate in a stone wall, and behindthese was a great house showin' out dim, with the winders all lighted up. 

"'Lord!' chuckled my grandfather, 'to think o' the tricks o' thisvagarious country! But, as we're here, we'll go on and give 'em a tasteof our quality. '

"They put new heart into the next movement, as you may guess; and theyhadn't fair started on it, when the door of the house swung open, anddown the shaft of light that shot out as far as the gate there come asmiling young gal, with a tray of glasses in her hands. 

"Now she come to the bars; and she took and put a glass through, notsayin' nothin', but invitin' some one to drink with a silent laugh. 

"Did any one take that glass? Of course he did, you'll be thinkin'; andyou'll be thinkin' wrong. Not a man of the three moved. They was strucklike as stone, and their lips was gone the colour of sloe berries. Not aman took the glass. For why? The moment the gal presented it, each sawthe face of a thing lookin' out of the winder over the porch, and theface was hidjus beyond words, and the shadder of it, with the lightbehind, stretched out and reached to the gal, and made her hidjus, too. 

"At last my grandfather give a groan and put out his hand; and, as he didit, the face went, and the gal was beautiful to see agen. 

"'Death and the devil!' said he. 'It's one or both, either way; and Iprefer 'em hot to cold!'

"He drank off half the glass, smacked his lips, and stood staring amoment. 

"'Dear, dear!' said the gal, in a voice like falling water, 'you've drunkblood, sir!'

"My grandfather gave a yell, slapped the rest of the liquor in the facesof his friends, and threw the cup agen the bars. It broke with a noiselike thunder, and at that he up'd with his hands and fell full lengthinto the snow. "

There was a pause. The little man by the door was twisting nervously inhis chair. 

"He came to--of course, he came to?" said he at length. 

"He come to, " said the banjo solemnly, "in the bitter break of dawn; thatis, he come to as much of hisself as he ever was after. He give asquiggle and lifted his head; and there was he and his friends a-lyin' onthe snow of the high downs. "

"And the house and the gal?"

"Narry a sign of either, sir, but just the sky and the white stretch; andone other thing. "

"And what was that?"

"A stain of red sunk in where the cup had spilt. "

There was a second pause, and the banjo blew into the bowl of his pipe. 

"They cleared out of that neighbourhood double quick, you'll bet, " saidhe. "But my grandfather was never the same man agen. His face tookpurple, while his friends' only remained splashed with red, same as birthmarks; and, I tell you, if he ever ventur'd upon 'Kate of Aberdare, ' hischeeks swelled up to the reed of his clarinet, like as a blue plum on astalk. And forty year after, he died of what they call solution of bloodto the brain. "

"And you can't have better proof than that, " said the little man. 

"That's what _I_ say, " said the banjo. "Next player, gentlemen, please. "

DARK DIGNUM

"I'd not go higher, sir, " said my landlady's father. I made out hiswarning through the shrill piping of the wind; and stopped and took inthe plunging seascape from where I stood. The boom of the waves came upfrom a vast distance beneath; sky and the horizon of running water seemedhurrying upon us over the lip of the rearing cliff. 

"It crumbles!" he cried. "It crumbles near the edge like as frostedmortar. I've seen a noble sheep, sir, eighty pound of mutton, browsinghere one moment, and seen it go down the next in a puff of white dust. Hark to that! Do you hear it?"

Through the tumult of the wind in that high place came a liquid vibrantsound, like the muffled stroke of iron on an anvil. I thought it thegobble of water in clanging caves deep down below. 

"It might be a bell, " I said. 

The old man chuckled joyously. He was my cicerone for the nonce; hadcome out of his chair by the ingle-nook to taste a little the salt oflife. The north-easter flashed in the white cataracts of his eyes andwoke a feeble activity in his scrannel limbs. When the wind blew loud, his daughter had told me, he was always restless, like an imprisonedsea-gull. He would be up and out. He would rise and flap his old draggledpinions, as if the great air fanned an expiring spark into flame. 

"It is a bell!" he cried--"the bell of old St. Dunstan's, that wasswallowed by the waters in the dark times. "

"Ah, " I said. "That is the legend hereabouts. "

"No legend, sir--no legend. Where be the tombstones of drownded marinersto prove it such? Not one to forty that they has in other sea-boardparishes. For why? Dunstan bell sounds its warning, and not a craft willput out. "

"There is the storm cone, " I suggested. 

He did not hear me. He was punching with his staff at one of a number oflittle green mounds that lay about us. 

"I could tell you a story of these, " he said. "Do you know where westand?"

"On the site of the old churchyard?"

"Ay, sir; though it still bore the name of the new yard in my firstmemory of it. "

"Is that so? And what is the story?"

He dwelt a minute, dense with introspection. Suddenly he sat himself downupon a mossy bulge in the turf, and waved me imperiously to a placebeside him. 

"The old order changeth, " he said. "The only lasting foundations of men'sworks shall be godliness and law-biding. Long ago they builded a newchurch--here, high up on the cliffs, where the waters could not reach;and, lo! the waters wrought beneath and sapped the foundations, and thechurch fell into the sea. "

"So I understand, " I said. 

"The godless are fools, " he chattered knowingly. "Look here at thesebents--thirty of 'em, may be. Tombstones, sir; perished like man hisworks, and the decayed stumps of them coated with salt grass. "

He pointed to the ragged edge of the cliff a score paces away. 

"They raised it out there, " he said, "and further--a temple of bondedstone. They thought to bribe the Lord to a partnership in theircorruption, and He answered by casting down the fair mansion into thewaves. "

I said, "Who--who, my friend?"

"They that builded the church, " he answered. 

"Well, " I said. "It seems a certain foolishness to set the edifice soclose to the margin. "

Again he chuckled. 

"It was close, close, as you say; yet none so close as you might thinknowadays. Time hath gnawed here like a rat on a cheese. But thefoolishness appeared in setting the brave mansion between the winds andits own graveyard. Let the dead lie seawards, one had thought, and thechurch inland where we stand. So had the bell rung to this day; and onlythe charnel bones flaked piecemeal into the sea. "

"Certainly, to have done so would show the better providence. "

"Sir, I said the foolishness _appeared_. But, I tell you, there wasforesight in the disposition--in neighbouring the building to the cliffpath. _For so they could the easier enter unobserved, and store theirTcegs of Nantes brandy in the belly of the organ_. "

"They? Who were they?"

"Why, who--but two-thirds of all Dunburgh?"

"Smugglers?"'

"It was a nest of 'em--traffickers in the eternal fire o' weekdays, andon the Sabbath, who so sanctimonious? But honesty comes not from thewashing, like a clean shirt, nor can the piety of one day purge the evilof six. They built their church anigh the margin, forasmuch as it washandy, and that they thought, 'Surely the Lord will not undermine Hisown?' A rare community o' blasphemers, fro' the parson that took hisregular toll of the organ-loft, to him that sounded the keys and pulledout the joyous stops as if they was so many spigots to what lay behind. "

"Of when do you speak?"

"I speak of nigh a century and a half ago. I speak of the time o' theSeven Years' War and of Exciseman Jones, that, twenty year after he wereburied, took his revenge on the cliff side of the man that done him todeath. "

"And who was that?"

"They called him Dark Dignum, sir--a great feat smuggler, and as wickedas he was bold, "

"Is your story about him?"

"Ay, it is; and of my grandfather, that were a boy when they laid, andwas glad to lay, the exciseman deep as they could dig; for the sight ofhis sooty face in his coffin was worse than a bad dream. "

"Why was that?"

The old man edged closer to me, and spoke in a sibilant voice. 

"He were murdered, sir, foully and horribly, for all they could neverbring it home to the culprit. "

"Will you tell me about it?"

He was nothing loth. The wind, the place of perished tombs, the verywild-blown locks of this 'withered apple-john', were eerie accompanimentsto the tale he piped in my ear:--

"When my grandfather were a boy, " he said, "there lighted in DunburghExciseman Jones. P'r'aps the village had gained an ill reputation. P'r'aps Exciseman Jones's predecessor had failed to secure the confidenceo' the exekitive. At any rate, the new man was little to the fancy of thevillage. He was a grim, sour-looking, brass-bound galloot; andincorruptible--which was the worst. The keg o' brandy left on hisdoorstep o' New Year's Eve had been better unspiled and run into thegutter; for it led him somehow to the identification of the innocent thatdone it, and he had him by the heels in a twinkling. The squire snortedat the man, and the parson looked askance; but Dark Dignum, he swore he'dbe even with him, if he swung for it. They was hurt and surprised, thatwas the truth, over the scrupulosity of certain people; and feelin'ran high against Exciseman Jones. 

"At that time Dark Dignum was a young man with a reputation above hisyears for profaneness and audacity. Ugly things there were said abouthim; and amongst many wicked he was feared for his wickedness. ExcisemanJones had his eye on him; and that was bad for Exciseman Jones. 

"Now one murk December night Exciseman Jones staggered home with abloody long slice down his scalp, and the red drip from it spotting thecobble-stones. 

"'Summut fell on him from a winder, ' said Dark Dignum, a little later, ashe were drinkin' hisself hoarse in the Black Boy. 'Summut fell on himretributive, as you might call it. For, would you believe it, the man hadat the moment been threatenin' me? He did. He said, "I know damn wellabout you, Dignum; and for all your damn ingenuity, I'll bring you with acrack to the ground yet. "'

"What had happened? Nobody knew, sir. But Exciseman Jones was in his bedfor a fortnight; and when he got on his legs again, it was pretty evidentthere was a hate between the two men that only blood-spillin' couldsatisfy. 

"So far as is known, they never spoke to one another again. They playedtheir game of death in silence--the lawful, cold and unfathomable; theunlawful, swaggerin' and crool--and twenty year separated the first moveand the last. 

"This were the first, sir--as Dark Dignum leaked it out long after in hiscups. This were the first; and it brought Exciseman Jones to his grave onthe cliff here. 

"It were a deep soft summer night; and the young smuggler sat by hisselfin the long room of the Black Boy. Now, I tell you he were a fox-shipintriguer--grand, I should call him, in the aloneness of his villainy. Hewould play his dark games out of his own hand; and sure, of all hiswickedness, this game must have seemed the sum. 

"I say he sat by hisself; and I hear the listening ghost of him call me aliar. For there were another body present, though invisible to mortaleye; and that second party were Exciseman Jones, who was hidden up thechimney. 

"How had he inveigled him there? Ah, they've met and worried that pointout since. No other will ever know the truth this side the grave. Butreports come to be whispered; and reports said as how Dignum had made anappointment with a bodiless master of a smack as never floated, to meethim in the Black Boy and arrange for to run a cargo as would never beshipped; and that somehow he managed to acquent Exciseman Jones o' thisdissembling appointment, and to secure his presence in hidin' to witnessit. 

"That's conjecture; for Dignum never let on so far. But what is known forcertain is that Exciseman Jones, who were as daring and determined ashis enemy--p'r'aps more so--for some reason was in the chimney, on to agrating in which he had managed to lower hisself from the roof; and thathe could, if given time, have scrambled up again with difficulty, but wasdebarred from going lower. And, further, this is known--that, as Dignumsat on, pretendin' to yawn and huggin' his black intent, a little sutplopped down the chimney and scattered on the coals of the laid firebeneath. 

"At that--'Curse this waitin'!' said he. 'The room's as chill as abelfry'; and he got to his feet, with a secret grin, and strolled to thehearthstone. 

"'I wonder, ' said he, 'will the landlord object if I ventur' upon a glintof fire for comfort's sake?' and he pulled out his flint and steel, struck a spark, and with no more feelin' than he'd express in lightinga pipe, set the flame to the sticks. 

"The trapt rat above never stirred or give tongue. My God! what a man!Sich a nature could afford to bide and bide--ay, for twenty year, if needbe. 

"Dignum would have enjoyed the sound of a cry; but he never got it. Helistened with the grin fixed on his face; and of a sudden he heard ascrambling struggle, like as a dog with the colic jumping at a wall; andpresently, as the sticks blazed and the smoke rose denser, a thickcoughin', as of a consumptive man under bed-clothes. Still no cry, norany appeal for mercy; no, not from the time he lit the fire till ahorrible rattle come down, which was the last twitches of somethin' thatchoked and died on the sooty gratin' above. 

"When all was quiet, Dignum he knocks with his foot on the floor and sitshisself down before the hearth, with a face like a pillow for innocence. 

"'I were chilled and lit it, ' says he to the landlord. 'You don't mind?'

"Mind? Who would have ventur'd to cross Dark Dignum's fancies?

"He give a boisterous laugh, and ordered in a double noggin of hummingstuff. 

"'Here, ' he says, when it comes, 'is to the health of Exciseman Jones, that swore to bring me to the ground. '

"'To the ground, ' mutters a thick voice from the chimney. 

"'My God!' says the landlord--'there's something up there!'

"Something there was; and terrible to look upon when they brought it tolight. The creature's struggles had ground the sut into its face, and itsnails were black below the quick. 

"Were those words the last of its death-throe, or an echo from beyond?Ah! we may question; but they were heard by two men. 

"Dignum went free. What could they prove agen him? Not that he knew therewas aught in the chimney when he lit the fire. The other would scarcelyhave acquent him of his plans. And Exciseman Jones was hurried into hisgrave alongside the church up here. 

"And therein he lay for twenty year, despite that, not a twelvemonthafter his coming, the sacrilegious house itself sunk roaring into thewaters. For the Lord would have none of it, and, biding His time, struckthrough a fortnight of deluge, and hurled church and cliff into ruin. Butthe yard remained, and, nighest the seaward edge of it, Exciseman Jonesslept in his fearful winding sheet and bided _his_ time. 

"It came when my grandfather were a young man of thirty, and mighty closeand confidential with Dark Dignum. God forgive him! Doubtless he wereled away by the older smuggler, that had a grace of villainy about him, 'tis said, and used Lord Chesterfield's printed letters for wadding tohis bullets. 

"By then he was a ramping, roaring devil; but, for all his bold handswere stained with crime, the memory of Exciseman Jones and of his promisedwelled with him and darkened him ever more and more, and never left him. So those that knew him said. 

"Now all these years the cliff edge agen the graveyard, where it wasbroke off, was scabbing into the sea below. But still they used this wayof ascent for their ungodly traffic; and over the ruin of the cliff theyhad drove a new path for to carry up their kegs. 

"It was a cloudy night in March, with scud and a fitful moon, and therewas a sloop in the offing, and under the shore a loaded boat that hadjust pulled in with muffled rowlocks. Out of this Dark Dignum was thefirst to sling hisself a brace of rundlets; and my grandfather followedwith two more. They made softly for the cliff path--began the ascent--washalf-way up. 

"Whiz!--a stone of chalk went by them with a skirl, and slapped into therubble below. 

"'Some more of St. Dunstan's gravel!' cried Dignum, pantin' out areckless laugh under his load; and on they went again. 

"Hwish!--a bigger lump came like a thunderbolt, and the wind of it tookthe bloody smuggler's hat and sent it swooping into the darkness like abird. 

"'Thunder!' said Dignum; 'the cliff's breaking away!'

"The words was hardly out of his mouth, when there flew such a volley ofchalk stones as made my grandfather, though none had touched him, fallupon the path where he stood, and begin to gabble out what he could callto mind of the prayers for the dying. He was in the midst of it, when heheard a scream come from his companion as froze the very marrow in hisbones. He looked up, thinkin' his hour had come. 

"My God! What a sight he saw! The moon had shone out of a sudden, and thelight of it struck down on Dignum's face, and that was the colour ofdirty parchment. And he looked higher, and give a sort of sob. 

"For there, stickin' out of the cliff side, was half the body ofExciseman Jones, with its arms stretched abroad, _and it was clawin' outlumps of chalk and hurling them down at Dignum_!

"And even as he took this in through his terror, a great ball of whitecame hurtling, and went full on to the man's face with a splash--and hewere spun down into the deep night below, a nameless thing. "

The old creature came to a stop, his eyes glinting with a febrileexcitement. 

"And so, " I said, "Exciseman Jones was true to his word?"

The tension of memory was giving--the spring slowly uncoiling itself. 

"Ay, " he said doubtfully. "The cliff had flaked away by degrees to hisvery grave. They found his skelington stickin' out of the chalk. "

"His _skeleton?"_ said I, with the emphasis of disappointment. 

"The first, sir, the first. Ay, his was the first. There've been a manyexposed since. The work of decay goes on, and the bones they fall intothe sea. Sometimes, sailing off shore, you may see a shank or an armprotrudin' like a pigeon's leg from a pie. But the wind or the weathertakes it and it goes. There's more to follow yet. Look at 'em! look atthese bents! Every one a grave, with a skelington in it. The wear andtear from the edge will reach each one in turn, and then the last of theungodly will have ceased from the earth. "

"And what became of your grandfather?"

"My grandfather? There were something happened made him renounce thedevil. He died one of the elect. His youth were heedless andunregenerate; but, 'tis said, after he were turned thirty he never smiledagen. There was a reason. Did I ever tell you the story of Dark Dignumand Exciseman Jones?"

WILLIAM TYRWHITT'S "COPY"

This is the story of William Tyrwhitt, who went to King's Cobb for restand change, and, with the latter, at least, was so far accommodatedas for a time to get beyond himself and into regions foreign to hisexperiences or his desires. And for this condition of his I hold myselfsomething responsible, inasmuch as it was my inquisitiveness was themeans of inducing him to an exploration, of which the result, with itsmeasure of weirdness, was for him alone. But, it seems, I was appointedan agent of the unexplainable without my knowledge, and it was simply mymisfortune to find my first unwitting commission in the selling of afriend. 

I was for a few days, about the end of a particular July, lodged in thatlittle old seaboard town of Dorset that is called King's Cobb. Thitherthere came to me one morning a letter from William Tyrwhitt, thepolemical journalist (a queer fish, like the cuttle, with an ink-bag forthe confusion of enemies), complaining that he was fagged and used up, and desiring me to say that nowhere could complete rest be obtained as inKing's Cobb. 

I wrote and assured him on this point. The town, I said, lay wrapped inthe hills as in blankets, its head only, winking a sleepy eye, projectingfrom the top of the broad steep gully in which it was stretched at ease. Thither few came to the droning coast; and such as did, looked up at theHigh Street baking in the sun, and, thinking of Jacob's ladder, composedthem to slumber upon the sand and left the climbing to the angels. Here, I said, the air and the sea were so still that one could hear the oysterssnoring in their beds; and the little frizzle of surf on the beach waslike to the sound to dreaming ears of bacon frying in the kitchens of theblest. 

William Tyrwhitt came, and I met him at the station, six or seven milesaway. He was all strained and springless, like a broken child's toy--"notlike that William who, with lance in rest, shot through the lists inFleet Street. " A disputative galley-puller could have triumphed overhim morally; a child physically. 

The drive in the inn brake, by undulating roads and scented valleys, shamed his cheek to a little flush of self-assertion. 

"I will sleep under the vines, " he said, "and the grapes shall drop intomy mouth. "

"Beware, " I answered, "lest in King's Cobb your repose should beeverlasting. The air of that hamlet has matured like old port in the binof its hills, till to drink of it is to swoon. "

We alighted at the crown of the High Street, purposing to descend onfoot the remaining distance to the shore. 

"Behold, " I exclaimed, "how the gulls float in the shimmer, like ashestossed aloft by the white draught of a fire! Behold these ancientbuildings nodding to the everlasting lullaby of the bay waters! Thecliffs are black with the heat apoplexy; the lobster is drawn scarlet tothe surface. You shall be like an addled egg put into an incubator. "

"So, " he said, "I shall rest and not hatch. The very thought is likesweet oil on a burn. "

He stayed with me a week, and his body waxed wondrous round and rosy, while his eye acquired a foolish and vacant expression. So it was withme. We rolled together, by shore and by road of this sluggard place, likespent billiard balls; and if by chance we cannoned, we swerved sleepilyapart, until, perhaps, one would fall into a pocket of the sand, and theother bring up against a cushion of sea-wall. 

Yet, for all its enervating atmosphere, King's Cobb has its finetraditions of a sturdy independence, and a slashing history withal; andits aspect is as picturesque as that of an opera bouffe fishing-harbour. Then, too, its High Street, as well as its meandering rivulets of lowstreets, is rich in buildings, venerable and antique. 

We took an irresponsible, smiling pleasure in noting theseadvantages--particularly after lunch; and sometimes, where an oldhouse was empty, we would go over it, and stare at beams andchimneypieces and hear the haunted tale of its fortunes, with a fainthalf-memory in our breasts of that one-time bugbear we had known as"copy. " But though more than once a flaccid instinct would move us tohave out our pencils, we would only end by bunging our foolish mouthswith them, as if they were cigarettes, and then vaguely wonderingat them for that, being pencils, they would not draw. 

By then we were so sinewless and demoralized that we could hear in thedistant strains of the European Concert nothing but an orchestra ofsweet sounds, and would have given ourselves away in any situation with apound of tea. Therefore, perhaps, it was well for us that, a peremptorysummons to town reaching me after seven days of comradeship with William, I must make shift to collect my faculties with my effects, and return tothe more bracing climate of Fleet Street. 

And here, you will note, begins the story of William Tyrwhitt, who wouldlinger yet a few days in that hanging garden of the south coast, and whowould pull himself together and collect matter for "copy. "

He found a very good subject that first evening of his solitude. 

I was to leave in the afternoon, and the morning we spent in aimlesslyrambling about the town. Towards mid-day, a slight shower drove us toshelter under the green verandah of a house, standing up from the lowerfall of the High Street, that we had often observed in our wanderings. This house--or rather houses, for it was a block of two--was very talland odd-looking, being all built of clean squares of a whitish granite;and the double porch in the middle base--led up to by side-going stepsbehind thin iron railings--roofed with green-painted zinc. In some of thewindows were jalousies, but the general aspect of the exterior was gauntand rigid; and the whole block bore a dismal, deserted look, as if it hadnot been lived in for years. 

Now we had taken refuge in the porch of that half that lay uppermost onthe slope; and here we noticed that, at a late date, the building wasseemingly in process of repair, painters' pots and brushes lying on awindow-sill, and a pair of steps showing within through the glass. 

"They have gone to dinner, " said I. "Supposing we seize the opportunityto explore?"

We pushed at the door; it yielded. We entered, shut ourselves in, andpaused to the sound of our own footsteps echoing and laughing fromcorners and high places. On the ground floor were two or three good-sizedrooms with modern grates, but cornices, chimney-pieces, embrasures finelyJacobean. There were innumerable under-stair and over-head cupboards, too, and pantries, and closets, and passages going off darkly into theunknown. 

We clomb the stairway--to the first floor--to the second. Here was allpure Jacobean; but the walls were crumbling, the paper peeling, thewindows dim and foul with dirt. 

I have never known a place with such echoes. They shook from a footsteplike nuts rattling out of a bag; a mouse behind the skirting led a wholecamp-following of them; to ask a question was, as in that other House, toawaken the derisive shouts of an Opposition. Yet, in the intervals ofsilence, there fell a deadliness of quiet that was quite appalling byforce of contrast. 

"Let us go down, " I said. "I am feeling creepy. "

"Pooh!" said William Tyrwhitt; "I could take up my abode here with afeather bed. "

We descended, nevertheless. Arrived at the ground floor, "I am going tothe back, " said William. 

I followed him--a little reluctantly, I confess. Gloom and shadow hadfallen upon the town, and this old deserted hulk of an abode was ghostlyto a degree. There was no film of dust on its every shelf or sill thatdid not seem to me to bear the impress of some phantom finger feeling itsway along. A glint of stealthy eyes would look from dark uncertaincorners; a thin evil vapour appear to rise through the cracks of theboards from the unvisited cellars in the basement. 

And here, too, we came suddenly upon an eccentricity of out-building thatwrought upon our souls with wonder. For, penetrating to the rear throughwhat might have been a cloak-closet or butler's pantry, we found asupplementary wing, or rather tail of rooms, loosely knocked together, toproceed from the back, forming a sort of skilling to the main building. These rooms led direct into one another, and, consisting of little morethan timber and plaster, were in a woeful state of dilapidation. Everywhere the laths grinned through torn gaps in the ceilings and walls;everywhere the latter were blotched and mildewed with damp, and thefloor-boards rotting in their tracks. Fallen mortar, rusty tins, yellowteeth of glass, whitened soot--all the decay and rubbish of a generationof neglect littered the place and filled it with an acrid odour. From oneof the rooms we looked forth through a little discoloured window upon apatch of forlorn weedy garden, where the very cats glowered in adepression that no surfeit of mice could assuage. 

We went on, our nervous feet apologetic to the grit they crunched; and, when we were come to near the end of this dreary annexe, turned off tothe left into a short gloom of passage that led to a closed door. 

Pushing this open, we found a drop of some half-dozen steps, and, goinggingerly down these, stopped with a common exclamation of surprise on ourlips. 

Perhaps our wonder was justified, for we were in the stern cabin of anancient West Indiaman. 

Some twenty feet long by twelve wide--there it all was, from the decktransoms above, to the side lockers and great curved window, slopingoutwards to the floor and glazed with little panes in galleries, thatfilled the whole end of the room. Thereout we looked, over the degradedgarden, to the lower quarters of the town--as if, indeed, we were perchedhigh up on waves--and even to a segment of the broad bay that swept bythem. 

But the room itself! What phantasy of old sea-dog or master-mariner hadconceived it? What palsied spirit, condemned to rust in inactivity, hadfound solace in this burlesque of shipcraft? To renew the past in such afixture, to work oneself up to the old glow of flight and action, andthen, while one stamped and rocked maniacally, to feel the refusal of somuch as a timber to respond to one's fervour of animation! It was agrotesque picture. 

Now, this cherished chamber had shared the fate of the rest. The paintand gilding were all cracked and blistered away; much of the glass ofthe stern-frame was gone or hung loose in its sashes; the elaboratelycarved lockers mouldered on the walls. 

These were but dummies when we came to examine them--mere slabs attachedto the brickwork, and decaying with it. 

"There should be a case-bottle and rummers in one, at least, " saidWilliam Tyrwhitt. 

"There are, sir, at your service, " said a voice behind us. 

We started and turned. 

It had been such a little strained voice that it was with somethinglike astonishment I looked upon the speaker. Whence he had issued I couldnot guess; but there he stood behind us, nodding and smiling--a squab, thick-set old fellow with a great bald head, and, for all the hair on hisface, a tuft like a teasel sprouting from his under lip. 

He was in his shirt-sleeves, without coat or vest; and I noticed that hisdirty lawn was oddly plaited in front, and that about his ample paunchwas buckled a broad belt of leather. Greased hip-boots encased his lowerlimbs, and the heels of these were drawn together as he bowed. 

William Tyrwhitt--a master of nervous English--muttered "Great Scott!"under his breath. 

"Permit me, " said the stranger--and he held out to us a tin pannikin(produced from Heaven knows where) that swam with fragrance. 

I shook my head. William Tyrwhitt, that fated man, did otherwise. Heaccepted the vessel and drained it. 

"It smacks of all Castille, " he said, handing it back with a sigh ofecstasy. "Who the devil are you, sir?"

The stranger gave a little crow. 

"Peregrine Iron, sir, at your service--Captain Penegrine Iron, of the_Raven_ sloop amongst others. You are very welcome to the run of my poorabode. "

"Yours?" I murmured in confusion. "We owe you a thousand apologies. "

"Not at all, " he said, addressing all his courtesy to William. Me, sincemy rejection of his beaker, he took pains to ignore. 

"Not at all, " he said. "Your intrusion was quite natural under thecircumstances. I take a pleasure in being your cicerone. This cabin (hewaved his hand pompously)--a fancy of mine, sir, a fancy of mine. Theactual material of the latest of my commands brought hither and adaptedto the exigencies of shore life. It enables me to live eternally in thepast--a most satisfying illusion. Come to-night and have a pipe and aglass with me. "

I thought William Tyrwhitt mad. 

"I will come, by all means, " he said. 

The stranger bowed us out of the room. 

"That is right, " he exclaimed. "You will find me here. Good-bye for thepresent. "

As we plunged like dazed men into the street, now grown sunny, I turnedon my friend. 

"William, " I said, "did you happen to look back as we left the cabin?"

"No. "

"I did. "

"Well?"

"There was no stranger there at all. The place was empty. "

"Well?"

"You will not go to-night?"

"You bet I do. "

I shrugged my shoulders. We walked on a little way in silence. Suddenlymy companion turned on me, a most truculent expression on his face. 

"For an independent thinker, " he said, "you are rather a pusillanimousjackass. A man of your convictions to shy at a shadow! Fie, sir, fie!What if the room _were_ empty? The place was full enough of traps topermit of Captain Iron's immediate withdrawal. "

Much may be expressed in a sniff. I sniffed. 

That afternoon I went back to town, and left the offensive William to hisfate. 

 * * * * *

It found him at once. 

The very day following that of my retreat, I was polishing phrases bygaslight in the dull sitting-room of my lodgings in the Lambeth Road, when he staggered in upon me. His face was like a sheep's, white andvacant; his hands had caught a trick of groping blindly along the backsof chairs. 

"You have obtained your 'copy'?" I said. 

I made him out to murmur "yes" in a shaking under-voice. He was sopatently nervous that I put him in a chair and poured him out awine-glassful of London brandy. This generally is a powerful emetic, butit had no more effect upon him than water. Then I was about to lower thegas, to save his eyes, but he stopped me with a thin shriek. 

"Light, light!" he whispered. "It cannot be too light for me!"

"Now, William Tyrwhitt, " I said, by-and-by, watchful of him, and markinga faint effusion of colour soak to his cheek, "you would not accept mywarning, and you were extremely rude to me. Therefore you have had anexperience--"

"An awful one, " he murmured. 

"An awful one, no doubt; and to obtain surcease of the haunting memory ofit, you must confide its processes to me. But, first, I must put it toyou, which is the more pusillanimous--to refuse to submit one's manlinessto the tyranny of the unlawful, or to rush into situations you have notthe nerve to adapt yourself to?"

"I could not foresee, I could not foresee. "

"Neither could I. And that was my very reason for declining theinvitation. Now proceed. "

It was long before he could. But presently he essayed, and gathered voicewith the advance of his narrative, and even unconsciously threw it intosomething the form of "copy. " And here it is as he murmured it, but witha gasp for every full-stop. 

"I confess I was so far moved by the tone of your protest as, after yourdeparture, to make some cautious inquiries about the house we hadvisited. I could discover nothing to satisfy my curiosity. It was knownto have been untenanted for a great number of years; but as to who wasthe landlord, whether Captain Iron or another, no one could inform me;and the agent for the property was of the adjacent town where you met me. I was not fortunate, indeed, in finding that any one even knew of theoddly appointed room; but considering that, owing to the time the househad remained vacant, the existence of this eccentricity could be atradition only with some casual few, my failure did not strike me asbeing at all bodeful. On the contrary, it only whetted my desire toinvestigate further in person, and penetrate to the heart of a verycaptivating little mystery. But probably, I thought, it is quite simpleof solution, and the fact of the repairers and the landlord being inevidence at one time, a natural coincidence. 

"I dined well, and sallied forth about nine o'clock. It was a nightpregnant with possibilities. The lower strata of air were calm, butoverhead the wind went down the sea with a noise of baggage-wagons, andthere was an ominous hurrying and gathering together of forces underthe bellying standards of the clouds. 

"As I went up the steps of the lonely building, the High Street seemed toturn all its staring eyes of lamps in my direction. 'What a drollfellow!' they appeared to be saying; 'and how will he look when hereissues?'

"'There ain't nubbudy in that house, ' croaked a small boy, who had pausedbelow, squinting up at me. 

"'How do you know?' said I. 'Move on, my little man. '

"He went; and at once it occurred to me that, as no notice was taken ofmy repeated knockings, I might as well try the handle. I did, found thedoor unlatched, as it had been in the morning, pushed it open, entered, and swung it to behind me. 

"I found myself in the most profound darkness--that darkness, if I mayuse the paradox, of a peopled desolation that men of but little nerve orresolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it atleisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick andrustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and, by its dim radiance, made my way through thebuilding by the passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all Ishrank or perspired on my spectral journey, I swear I was notconscious of doing so. 

"I came to the door of the cabin. All was black and silent. 

"'Ah!' I thought, 'the rogue has played me false. '

"Not to subscribe to an uncertainty, I pushed at the door, saw onlyswimming dead vacancy before me, and tripping at the instant on the sill, stumbled crashing into the room below and slid my length on the floor. 

"Now, I must tell you, it was here my heart gave its first somersault. Ihad fallen, as I say, into a black vault of emptiness; yet, as I rose, bruised and dazed, to my feet, there was the cabin all alight from agreat lanthorn that swung from the ceiling, and our friend of the morningseated at a table, with a case-bottle of rum and glasses before him. 

"I stared incredulous. Yes, there could be no doubt it was he, and prettyflushed with drink, too, by his appearance. 

"'Incandescent light in a West Indiaman!' I muttered; for not otherwisecould I account for the sudden illumination. 'What the deuce!'

"'Belay that!' he growled. He seemed to observe me for the first time. 

"'A handsome manner of boarding a craft you've got, sir, ' said he, glooming at me. 

"I was hastening to apologize, but he stopped me coarsely. 

"'Oh, curse the long jaw of him! Fill your cheek with that, you Barbaryape, and wag your tail if you can, but burn your tongue. '

"He pointed to the case-bottle with a forefinger that was like a dirtyparsnip. What induced me to swallow the insult, and even some of thepungent liquor of his rude offering? The itch for 'copy' was, no doubt, at the bottom of it. 

"I sat down opposite my host, filled and drained a bumper. The fire ranto my brain, so that the whole room seemed to pitch and courtesy. 

"'This is an odd fancy of yours, ' I said. 

"'What is?' said he. 

"'This, ' I answered, waving my hand around--'this freak of turning a backroom into a cabin. '

"He stared at me, and then burst into a malevolent laugh. 

"'Back room, by thunder!' said he. 'Why, of course--just a step into thegarden where the roses and the buttercupses be agrowing. '

"Now I pricked my ears. 

"'Has the night turned foul?' I muttered. 'What a noise the rain makesbeating on the window!'

"'It's like to be a foul one for you, at least, ' said he. 'But, as forthe rain, it's blazing moonlight. '

"I turned to the broad casement in astonishment. My God! what did I see?Oh, my friend, my friend! will you believe me? By the melancholy glowthat spread therethrough I saw that the whole room was rising and sinkingin rhythmical motion; that the lights of King's Cobb had disappeared, andthat in their place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water, thepursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the glass with innocuousfingers. 

"I started to my feet, mad in an instant. 

"'Look, look!' I shrieked. 'They follow us--they struggle to get at you, you bloody murderer!'

"They came rising on the crests of the billows; they hurried fast in ourwake, tumbling and swaying, their stretched, drowned faces now lifted tothe moonlight, now over-washed in the long trenches of water. They wererolled against the galleries of glass, on which their hair slapped likeribbons of seaweed--a score of ghastly white corpses, with strained blackeyes and pointed stiff elbows crookt up in vain for air. 

"I was mad, but I knew it all now. This was no house, but the good, ill-fated vessel _Rayo, _ once bound for Jamaica, but on the voyage falleninto the hands of the bloody buccaneer, Paul Hardman, and her crew madeto walk the plank, and most of her passengers. I knew that the darkscoundrel had boarded and mastered her, and--having first fired and sunkhis own sloop--had steered her straight for the Cuban coast, makingdisposition of what remained of the passengers on the way, and I knewthat my great-grandfather had been one of these doomed survivors, andthat he had been shot and murdered under orders of the ruffian that nowsat before me. All this, as retailed by one who sailed for a season underHardman to save his skin, is matter of old private history; and of commonreport was it that the monster buccaneer, after years of successfultrading in the ship he had stolen, went into secret and prosperousretirement under an assumed name, and was never heard of more on the highseas. But, it seemed, it was for the great-grandson of one of his victimsto play yet a sympathetic part in the grey old tragedy. 

"How did this come to me in a moment--or, rather, what was that dreambuzzing in my brain of 'proof' and 'copy' and all the tame stagnationof a long delirium of order? I had nothing in common with the latter. Insome telepathic way--influenced by these past-dated surroundings--droppedinto the very den of this Procrustes of the seas, I was there to re-enactthe fearful scene that had found its climax in the brain of my ancestor. 

"I rushed to the window, thence back to within a yard of the gloweringbuccaneer, before whom I stood, with tost arms, wild and menacing. 

"'They follow you!' I screamed. 'Passive, relentless, and deadly, theyfollow in your wake and will not be denied. The strong, the helpless, the coarse and the beautiful--all you have killed and mutilated in yourwanton devilry--they are on your heels like a pack of spectre-hounds, andsooner or later they will have you in their cold arms and hale you downto the secret places of terror. Look at Beston, who leads, with a fearfulsmile on his mouth! Look at that pale girl you tortured, whose hairwrithes and lengthens--a swarm of snakes nosing the hull for some openport-hole to enter by! Dog and devil, you are betrayed by your ownhideous cruelty!'

"He rose and struck at me blindly; staggered, and found his filthy voicein a shriek of rage. 

"'Jorinder! make hell of the galley-fire! Heat some irons red and fetchout a bucket of pitch. We'll learn this dandy galloot his manners!'

"Wrought to the snapping-point of desperation, I sprang at and closedwith him; and we went down on the floor together with a heavy crash. I was weaponless, but I would choke and strangle him with my hands. I hadhim under, my fingers crookt in his throat. His eyeballs slipped forward, like banana ends squeezed from their skins; he could not speak or cry, but he put up one feeble hand and flapped it aimlessly. At that, in themidst of my fury, I glanced above me, and saw a press of dim facescrowding a dusk hatch; and from them a shadowy arm came through, pointinga weapon; and all my soul reeled sick, and I only longed to be left timeto destroy the venomous horror beneath me before I passed. 

"It was not to be. Something, a physical sensation like the jerk of ahiccup, shook my frame; and immediately the waters of being seemed toburst their dam and flow out peaceably into a valley of rest. "

William Tyrwhitt paused, and "Well?" said I. 

"You see me here, " he said. "I woke this morning, and found myself lyingon the floor of that shattered and battered closet, and a starved demonof a cat licking up something from the boards. When I drove her away, there was a patch there like ancient dried blood. "

"And how about your head?"

"My head? Why, the bullet seemed stuck in it between the temples; andthere I am afraid it is still. "

"Just so. Now, William Tyrwhitt, you must take a Turkish, bath and somecooling salts, and then come and tell me all about it again. "

"Ah! you don't believe me, I see. I never supposed you would. Good-night!"

But, when he was gone, I sat ruminating. 

"That Captain Iron, " I thought, "walked over the great rent in the floorwithout falling through. Well, well!"

A LAZY ROMANCE

I had slept but two nights at King's Cobb, when I saw distinctly that thenovel with which I was to revolutionize society and my own fortunes, andwith the purpose of writing which in an unvexed seclusion I had buriedmyself in this expedient hamlet on the South Coast, was withered in thebud beyond redemption. To this lamentable canker of a seedling hope theeternal harmony of the sea was a principal contributor; but Miss Whiffleconfirmed the blight. I had fled from the jangle of a city, and theworries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities; and the resultwas--

I had rooms on the Parade--a suggestive mouthful. But then the Parade issuch a modest little affair. The town itself is flung down a steep hill, at the mouth of a verdurous gorge; and lies pitched so far as the verywaterside, a picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edgesbristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crookedbreakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to itsharbourage--an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For theattractions of King's Cobb are--comparatively--limited, and its neareststation is a full six miles distant along a switchback road. 

Possibly this last fact may have militated against the popularity ofKing's Cobb as a holiday resort. If so, all the better; and mayenterprise for ever languish in the matter. For vulgarity can claimno commoner purpose with fashion than is shown in that destruction ofancient landmarks and double gilding of new which follows the "openingout" of some unsophisticated colony of simple souls. 

King's Cobb, if "remote and unfriended, " is neither "melancholy" nor"slow"; but it is small, and all its fine little history--for it has hada stirring one--has ruffled itself out on a liliputian platform. 

Than this, its insignificance, I desired nothing better. I wished to feelthe comparative importance of the individual, which one cannot do incrowded colonies. I coveted surroundings that should be primitive--anatmosphere in which my thoughts could speak to me coherent. I would beas one in a cave, looking forth on sea, and sky, and the buoyant glory ofNature; unvexed of conventions; untrammelled by social observances;building up my enchanted palace of the imagination against such abackground as only the unsullied majesty of sky and ocean could present. For the result was to crown with my name an epoch in literature; andhither in future ages should the pilgrim stand at gaze, murmuring tohimself, 'And here he wrote it!'

I laid my head on my pillow, that first night of my stay, with a brimmingbrain and a heart of high resolve. The two little windows, under athatched roof, of my sleeping place (_that_ lay over my sitting-room, andboth looked oceanwards) were open to the inpour of sweet hot air; andonly the regular wash of the sea below broke the close stillness of thenight. I say this was all; and, with the memory upon me, I could easily, at any time, break the second commandment. 

I had thought myself fortunate in my lodgings. They were in a mostcharming old-world cottage--as I have said on the Parade--and at hightide I could have thrown a biscuit into the sea with merely a lazy jerk. My sitting-room put forth a semi-circular window--like a lighthouselantern--upon the very pathway, and it had been soothing during theafternoon to look from out this upon the little world of sea and sky andstriding cliff that was temporarily mine. From the Parade four feet ofstone wall dipped to a second narrow terrace, and this, in its turn, wasbut a step above a slope of shingle that ran down to the water. 

Veritably had I pitched my tent on the wide littoral of rest. So Ithought with a smile, as I composed myself for slumber. 

I slept, and I woke, and I lay awake for hours. Every vext problem of mylife and of the hereafter presented itself to me, and had to be arguedout and puzzled over with maddening reiteration. The reason for this wasevident and flagrant. It had woven itself into the tissue of my briefunconsciousness, and was now recognised as, ineradicably, part of myself. 

The tide was incoming, that was all, and the waves currycombed the beachwith a swishing monotony that would have dehumanized an ostler. 

This rings like the undue inflation of a little theme. I ask no pity forit, nor do I make apology for my weakness. Men there may be, no doubt, to whom the unceasing recurrent thump and scream of a coasting tide onshingle speaks, even in sleep, of the bountiful rhythm of Nature. I amnot one of them--at least, since I visited King's Cobb. The noise of thewaters got into my brain and stayed there. It turned everything elseout--sleep, thought, faith, hope, and charity. From that first awakeningmy skull was a mere globe of stagnant fluid, for any disease germs thatlisted to propagate in. 

Perhaps I was too near the coast-line. The highest appreciations ofNature's thunderous forces are conceived, I believe, in the muffledseclusion of the study. I had heard of still-rooms. I did not quite knowwhat they were; but they seemed to me an indispensable part of seasidelodgings, and for the rest of that night I ardently and almost tearfullylonged to be in one. 

I came down in the morning jaded and utterly unrefreshed. It was patentthat I was in no state to so much as outline the preliminaries of mygreat undertaking. "Use shall accustom me, " I groaned. "I shall scarcelynotice it to-night. "

And it was at this point that Miss Whiffle walked like a banshee into thedisturbed chambers of my life, and completed my demoralization. 

I must premise that I am an exquisitively nervous man--one who wouldaccept almost ridiculous impositions if the alternative were a "scene. "Strangers, I fancy, are quick to detect the signs of this weakness in me;but none before had ever ventured to take such outrageous advantage ofit as did Miss Whiffle, with the completest success. 

This lady had secured me for a month. My rights extended over thelantern-windowed sitting-room and the bedroom above it. They were toinclude, moreover, board of a select quality. 

"Select" represented Miss Whiffle's brazen mean of morality; and, indeed, it is an elastic and accommodating word. One, for instance, may select anaged gander for its wisdom, knowing that the youthful gosling isproverbially "green. " Miss Whiffle selected the aged gander for me, and Ignawed its sinewy limbs without a protest. On a similar principle sheappeared to ransack the town shops for prehistoric joints (the localitywas rich in fossils), and vegetables that, like eggs, only grew harderthe more they were boiled. 

I submitted, of course; and should have done no less by a landlady not soobstreperously constituted. But this terrible person gauged and took mein hand from the very morning following my arrival. 

She came to receive my _orders_ after breakfast (tepid chicory and anomelette like a fragment of scorched blanket) with her head wrapped up ina towel. Thus habited she had the effrontery to trust the meal had beento my liking. I gave myself away at once by weakly answering, "Oh, certainly!"

"As to dinner, sir, " she said faintly, "it is agreed, no kitching fire inthe hevening. That is understood. "

I said, "Oh, certainly!" again. 

"What I should recommend, " she said--and she winced obtrusively at everysixth word--"is an 'arty meal at one, and a light supper at height. "

"That will suit me admirably, " I said. 

She tapped her fingers together indulgently. 

"So I thought, " she murmured. "Now, what do you fancy, sir?"

"Dear me!" I exclaimed, for her face was horribly contorted. "Are you inpain?"

"Agonies!" said Miss Whiffle. 

"Toothache?"

"Neuralgia, sir, for my sins. "

"Is there--is there no remedy?"

She was taken with a sharp spasm of laughter, mirthless, but consciouslyexpressive of all the familiar processes of self-effacement undertorture. 

"I arks nothing but my duty, sir, " she said. "That is the myrrh andbalsam to a racking 'ed. Not but what I owns to a shrinking like untodeath over the thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest andquiet is needful, but it's little I shall get of either out of a kitchingfire in the dog days. And what would you fancy for your dinner, sir?"

"I am sorry, " I murmured, "that you should suffer on my account. Isuppose there is nothing cold--"

"Not enough, sir, in all the 'ouse to bait a mousetrap. Nor would Iinconvenience you, if not for your own kind suggestion. But potted meatsis 'andy and ever sweet, and if I might make bold to propose a tin--"

"Very well. Get me what you like, Miss Whiffle. "

"I must arks your pardin, sir. But to walk out in this 'eat, and everyrolling pebble under my foot a knife through my 'ed--no, sir. I make boldto claim that consideration for myself. "

"Leave it to me, then. I will do my own catering this morning. "

Then I added, in the forlorn hope of justifying my moral ineptitude tomyself, "If you take my advice, you will lie down. "

"And where, sir?" she answered, with a particularly patient smile. "Thebeds is unmade as yet, sir, " she went on, in a suffering decline, "andrumpled sheets is thorns to a bursting brain. "

Then she looked meaningly at the sitting-room sofa. 

"I made bold to think, if you _'ad_ 'appened to been a-going to bathe, the only quiet place in the 'ouse--" she murmured, in semi-detachedsentences, and put her hand to her brow. 

Five minutes later (I fear no one will credit it) I was outside thehouse, and Miss Whiffle was installed, towel and all, upon my sofa. 

For a moment I really think the outrageous absurdity of the situation didgoad me to the tottering point of rebellion. I had not the courage, however, to let myself go, and, as usual, succumbed to the tyranny ofcircumstances. 

It was a blazing morning. The flat sea lay panting on its coasts, as if, for all its liquid sparkle, it were athirst; and the town, under the ovenof its hills, burned red-hot, like pottery in a kiln. 

I went and bought my tinned meat (a form of preserve quite odious to me)and strolled back disconsolately to the Parade. Occasionally, flittingpast the lantern window, I would steal a side glance into the coolluminosity of my own inaccessible parlour; and there always, reclining ather ease upon my sofa, was the ineradicable presentment of Miss Whiffle. 

At one o'clock I ventured to reclaim my own, and sat me down at table, ascorched and glutinous wreck, too overcome with lassitude to tackle theobnoxious meal of my own providing. And to the sofa, already madefamiliar of that dishonoured towel, I was fain presently to confide theempty problem of my own aching head. 

All this was but the forerunner and earnest of a month's long martyrdom. That night the sea had me by the nerves again, and for many nightsafter; and, although I grew in time to a certain tolerance of the boomingmonotony, it was the tolerance of a dully resigned, not an indifferent, brain. 

When it came to the second morning, not only the novel, but the mere ideaof my ever having contemplated writing one, was a thing with me to feeblymarvel over. And from that time I set myself down to exist and broilonly, doling out a languid interest to the locality, the shimmer of whosebaking hill-sides made all life a quivering, glaring phantom of itself. 

Miss Whiffle tyrannized over me more or less according to her mood; butshe did not usurp my sitting-room again. I used to sit by the hour atthe lantern window, in a sort of greasy blankness, like a meat pudding, and vacantly scrutinize the loiterers who passed by on the hot asphalt ofthe Parade. Screened by the window curtains, I could see and hear withoutendangering my own privacy; and many were the odd interchanges of speechthat fell from strangers unconscious of a listener. 

One particularly festering day after dinner I had the excitement of quitea pretty little quarrel for dessert. Miss Whiffle had stuffed me withsuet, in meat and pudding, to a point of stupefaction that stopped shortonly of absolute insensibility; and in this state I took up my usual postat the window, awaiting in swollen vacuity the possibilities of theafternoon. 

On the horizon violet-hot sea and sky showed scarce a line of demarcationbetween them. Nearer in the waves snored stertorously from exhaustedlungs, as if the very tide were in extremis. Not a breath of air fannedthe pitiless Parade, and the sole accent on life came from a droning, monotonous voice pitched from somewhere in querulous complaint. 

"Frarsty!" it wailed, "Frarsty! I warnt thee!" and again, "I warnt thee, Frarsty! Frarsty! Frar--r--r--rsty!" drawn out in an inconceivablepassionlessness of desire again and again, till I felt myself absorbingthe ridiculous yearning for an absurd person and inclined to weephysterical tears at his unresponsiveness. 

Then through the suffocating miasma thridded another sound--the whine ofa loafing tramp slowly pleading along the house fronts--vainly, too, asit appeared. 

"Friends, " went his formula, nasal and forcibly spasmodic in the bestgull-catcher style, "p'raps you will ask why I, a able-bodied man, areasking for ass--ist--ance in your town. Friends, I answer, becorse Icannot get work and becorse I cannot starve. Any honest work I would bethankful for; but no one will give it to me. "

Then followed an elaborate presentation, in singsong verse, of his ownundeserved indigence and the brutality of employers, and so therecitation again:--

"Friends, the least ass--ist--ance would be welcome. I am a honestBritish workman, and employ--ment I cannot ob--tain. You sit in yourcom--for--ta--ble 'ouses, and I ask you to ass--ist a fellow creature, driven to this for no fault of his own--for many can 'elp one where onecannot 'elp many. "

Then he hove into sight--a gastropodous tub of a fellow, with a rascallyred eye; and I shrank behind my curtains, for I never court parley withsuch gentlemen. 

He spotted me, of course, --rogues of his feather have a hawk's eye fortimid quarry, --and his bloated face appeared at the window. 

"Sir--friend, " he said, in a confidential, hoarse whisper, "won't you'elp a starvin' British workman?"

I gave him sixpence, cursing inwardly this my concession to puretimorousness, and the bestial mask of depravity vanished with a grin. 

After that I was left to myself, heat and haze alone reigning without;and presently, I think, I must have fallen into a suetty doze, for I wassemi-conscious of voices raised in dispute for a length of time, before Iroused to the fact that two people were quarrelling just outside mywindow. 

They were a young man--almost a boy--and a girl of about his own age; andboth evidently belonged to the labouring classes. 

She was, I took occasion to notice, aggressively pretty in that hot redand black style that finds its warmest admirers in a class cultivatedabove that to which she belonged; and she was scorning and flouting herslow, perplexed swain with that over-measure of vehemence characteristicof a sex devoid of the sense of proportion. 

"Aw!" she was saying, as I came into focus of their dispute. "That's themoral of a mahn, it is. Yer ter work when ye like an' ter play when yelike, and the girls hahs ter sit and dangle their heels fer yer honours'convenience. "

"I doan't arlays get my likes, Jenny, or I shud a' met you yesterday. "

"Ay, as yer promused. "

"We worked ower late pulling the lias, I tell yer. 'Twould 'a' meant halfa day's wages garn if I'd com', and theer, my dear, 'ud been reasonfor another delay in oor getting spliced. "

"You're fine and vulgar, upon my word! A little free, too, and a littlemistook. I've no mind ter get spliced, as yer carls it, wi' a chap ascannot see's way ter keep tryst. "

"Yer doan't mean thart?"

"Doan't I? Yer'll answer fer me in everything, 't seems. But yer've gotenough ter answer fer yerself, Jack Curtice. I'm none of the sort ter goor stay at anny mahn's pleasure. There's kerps and dabs in the sea yet, Jack Curtice; and fatter ones ter fish fer, too. "

"But yer doan't understand. "

"I understand my own vally; and that isn't ter be kep' drarging my toeson the Parade half an a'rtenoon fer a chap as thinks he be betterengaged summer else. "

"And yer gone ter break wi' me fer thart?"

"Good-bye, Mr. Curtice, " she said, and jerked her nose high and walkedoff. 

Now here was an inconsistent jade, and I felt sorry and relieved for thesake of the young fellow. 

He stood, after the manner of his kind, amazed and speechless. Man'ssaving faculty of logic was in him, but tongue-tied; and he could notexpress his intuitive recognition of the self-contradictory. Such naturesfrequently make reason articulate through a blow--a rough way of knockingher into shape, but commonly effectual. Jack, however, was evidently alarge gentle swain of the dumb-suffering type--one of those unresistingleviathans of good-humour, upon whom a woman loves to vent that passionof the illogical which an antipathetic sex has vainly tried to laugh herout of conceit with. 

I peered a little longer, and presently saw Mr. Curtice walk off in astate compound of bewilderment and abject depression. 

This was the beginning to me of an interest apart from that which hadbrought me to King's Cobb. A real nutshell drama had usurped the place ofthat fictitious one that had as yet failed to mark an epoch by so much asa scratch. I accepted the former as some solace for the intolerablewrong inflicted upon me by the sea and Miss Whiffle. 

I happened across my unconscious friends fairly frequently after that myfirst introduction to them; so often, indeed, that, judged by whatfollowed, it would almost seem as if Fate, desiring record of an incidentin the lives of these two, had intentionally worked to discomfit me froma task more engrossing. 

Apart, and judged on their natural merits, I took Jack for a good stolidfellow, innately and a little aggravatingly virtuous, and perhaps atrifle more just than generous. 

Jenny, I felt, had the spurious brilliancy of that division of her sexthat claims as intuition an inability to master the processes of thought, and attributes to this faculty all fortunate conclusions, but none thatis faulty. I thought, with some commiseration for him, that at bottom hermanner showed some real leaning towards the lover she had discarded--thatshe felt the need of a pincushion, as it were, into which to stick thelittle points of her malevolence. I think I was inclined to be hard onher. I have felt the same antagonism many times towards beauty that wasunattainable by me. For she was richly pretty, without doubt. 

When in the neighbourhood of one another, however, they were wont toassume an elaborate artificiality of speech and manner in communion withtheir friends, that was designed with each to point the moral of acomplete indifference and forgetfulness. But the girl was by far thebetter actor; and not only did she play her own part convincingly, butshe generally managed to show up in her rival that sense of mortificationthat it was his fond hope he was effectually concealing. 

A fortnight passed; and, lo! there came the end of the lovers' quarrel inall dramatic appropriateness. 

By that time the doings of Jack and Jenny had come to be my mind's onlyrefuge from such a vacancy of outlook as I had never before experienced. "All down the coast, " that summer, "the languid air did swoon. " The earthbroiled, and very thought perspired; and Miss Whiffle's voice was like asteam-whistle. 

One day, as I was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal, andbalancing the gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tapiocapudding, a muffled, rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the windowand floor vibrate slightly. It seemed so distant and unimportant that Itook no notice of it; and it was only when, ten minutes later, I becameaware that certain excited townsfolk were scurrying past outside that Iroused slowly to the thought that here was something unusual toward. Then, indeed, a sort of insane _abandon_ flashed into life in me, and Ileapt to my feet with maniac eyes. Something stirring in King's Cobb! Ishould have thought nothing less than the last trump could have prickedit out of its accustomed grooves; and that even then it would haveslipped back into them with a sluggish sense of grievance after the firstflourish. 

I left my congealing dish, snatched up my hat, and joined the attenuatedchase. It was making in one direction--a point, apparently, to the eastof the town. As I sped excited through the narrow and tortuous streets, agreat bulge of acrid dust bellied upon me suddenly at a corner; and, turning the latter, I plunged into a perfect fog of the same grittysmoke. In this, phantom figures moved, appeared, and vanished; hoarsecries resounded, and a general air of wild confusion and alarm prevailed. For the moment, I felt as if some history of the town's past werere-enacting, as if a sudden swoop of Frank or Dutchman upon the coast hadcalled forth all the defensive ardour of its people. There was nothing ofgunpowder in the stringent opacity, however; but, rather, a strongsuggestion of ancient and disintegrated mortar. 

A shape sped by me in the fog, and I managed to stay and question it. 

"What is it all?" I asked. 

"House fell down, " was the breathless answer; "and a poor chap left alofton the ruins. "

Then I grew as insane as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly toand fro, striving at every coign to pierce with my eyesight the whitedrift. I pushed back my hat; I gnawed my knuckles; I felt that I couldnot stay still, yet knew not for what point to make. Almost I felt thatin another moment I should screech out--when a breath of sea air caughtthe skirt of the cloud, and rolled the bulk of it up and away overthe house-tops. 

Then, at once, was revealed to me the cause and object of all thisgaggle, and confusion, and outcry. It was revealed to the crowd, too, that stood about me, and, in the revelation, the noise of its mouthingwent off and faded, till a tense silence reigned and the murmur of one'sbreathing seemed a sacrilege. 

I saw before me a ruinous space--a great ragged gap in a lofty block ofbrick and mortar. This block had evidently, at one time, consisted of twohigh semi-detached houses, and of these, one lay a monstrous heap oftumbled and shattered _débris_. A ruin, but not quite; for, as the courseof a landslip will often tower with great spires and pinnacles of rockand ragged earth that have withstood the pull and onset of the movinghill-side, so here a high sheet of shattered wall, crowned with a clusterof toppling chimneys, stood up stark in the midst of the generaloverthrow. And there aloft, clinging to the crumbling stack, that mightat any moment part, and fling and crush him into the savage ruin below, stood the figure of a solitary man. And the man was my friend of theParade, Jack Curtice. 

I could see and recognise him plainly--even the frantic clutch of hishands and the deadly pallor of his face. 

The block--an ancient one--had been, as I afterwards learned, in courseof demolition when the catastrophe took place. At the moment the poorfellow had been alone at his work, and now his destruction seemed a merematter of seconds. 

White dust rose from the heap, like smoke from an extinguished fire; andever, as we looked, spars and splinters of brick tore away from the highfragment yet standing, and plunged with a thud into the wrack underneath. 

It was glaringly evident that not long could elapse before wall and manwould come down with a hideous, shattering run. A slip, a wilder clutchat his frail support, might in an instant precipitate the calamity. 

Then from the upturned faces of the women cries of pity and anguish brokeforth, and men nipped one another's arms and gasped, and knew not whatcounsel to offer. 

"Do summut! do summut!" cried the women; and their mates only shook offtheir pleadings with a peevish show of callousness, that was merely thedumb anguish of undemonstrativeness. For, while their throats were thick, their practical brains were busy. 

Some one suggested a ladder, and in a moment there was an aimlessscurrying and turning amongst the women. 

"Why don't 'ee stir theeself and hunt for un, Jarge?" panted one thatstood near me, twisting hysterically upon a slow youth at her side. 

"Shut up, 'Liza!" he answered gruffly; then, with a sort of indrawngasp--"Look art the wall, lass--look art the wall!"

It was obvious to the least knowing what he meant. To lean so much as abroomstick, it seemed, against that tottering ruin would infalliblycomplete its destruction. 

One foot of the clinging figure high up was seen to move slightly, and alittle bomb of mortar span out into the air and burst into dust on aprojecting brick. A long shrill sigh broke from the crowd. 

Then the male wiseheads came together, and, desperate to snap the chordof impotent suspense, mooted and rejected plan after plan that their sanejudgment knew from the first to be impracticable. 

At the outset it was plainly impossible for a soul to approach the ruins. Apart from the almost certain mangling such a venture would entail uponthe explorer, the least stirring or shifting of the great heap of rubbishflung about the base of the wall would certainly risk the immediatecollapse of the latter. 

Success, it was evident, must come, if at all, from a distance--but how?

One suggested slinging a rope from window to window of adjacent housesacross the path of the broken chimney-stack--a good method of rescue hadcircumstances lent themselves to it. They did not. On the ruin side awide space intervened; on the other, the sister house to that which hadfallen, and which was also included in the order of demolition, wasitself affected by the loss of its support, and leaned in a sinistermanner, its party walls bulged and rent towards the scene of devastation. 

Nothing short of the great Roc itself could, it seemed, snatch the poorfellow from his death perch. 

There came suddenly an ominous silence. Then strode out in front of hisfellows--and he moved so close to the ruin that the women whimpered andheld one another--an old, rough-bearded chap in stained corduroy. 

"Whart's he gone to do?" gasped the sibilant voices. 

He hollowed his hands to his mouth, he cleared his hoarse throat two orthree times. Only a little trailing screech came from it at first. Thenhe cursed his weakness, and pulled himself together. 

"Jark! Jark Curtus!" he hailed, in an explosive voice. 

"Hullo!"

The weak, small response floated down. 

"My lard! my poor lard! we've thought oor best, arnd we can do nothunfower 'ee. "

Instantly a shrill protest of horror went up from the women. This was notwhat they had expected. 

"What! leave the mis'rable boy to his fate!"

There followed a storm of hisses from them--absolutely unreasonable, ofcourse. The old fellow turned to retire, with hanging head. 

At the moment a girl, flushed, blowzed, breathless, broke through theskirt of the mob and barred his retreat. 

"Oh!" she panted, shaking her jet-black noddle at him--"here's a parcelo' gor-crows for discussin' help to a Christian marn! What! a score o'wiselings, and not one to hit oot the means and the way?"

She had only just heard, and had run a mile to the rescue of her old lad. 

The women caught her enthusiasm, and jeered and cheered formlessly, astheir manner is; for each desired for her own voice a separaterecognition. 

Jenny pushed rudely past the abashed gaffer. She was hatless, and herhair had tumbled abroad. She raised her face, with the eyes shining. 

"Jack!" she cried, in a shrill voice--"Jack!"

The little weak response wailed down again. 

"Jenny! I'm anigh done. "

"Hold on a bit longer, Jack!" she screamed. "Don't move till I tell 'ee. I'm agone to save thee, Jack!"

Again from the women a rapturous cry broke out. What incompetent noodlesappeared their masters in juxtaposition with this fearless, defiantcreature. 

The man up aloft seemed to shiver in the shock of the outcry; and oncemore some fragments of mortar rolled from under his feet and bounded intothe depths. The girl rounded upon the voicers. 

"Hold thee blazing tongues!" she cried in fury. "D'ee warnt to shake unfrom his perch?"

She turned to the foremost group of men. 

"A couple o' long scaffold poles fro' yonder!" she cried hurriedly, "andtwenty fathom o' rope!"

Her quick eyes and intelligence had found what she wanted in a builder'syard no great distance away. 

"Follow, a dozen o' you!" she cried; and sped off in the direction shehad indicated. 

Just twelve men, and no more, obeyed her. She was mistress of thesituation, and the crowd felt it. They made room for the dominantintellect, and awaited developments, watching, in suppressed excitementand trepidation, the figure--whom exhaustion was slowly mastering--highup above them. 

Suddenly a sort of huge L-shaped structure moved down the street, untilit stood opposite the ruined house. Then, twisting and rearing itselfaloft, it took to itself the form of a lofty, slender gallows. 

It was formed of a couple of forty-foot scaffolding poles, stoutly boundand corded together, the base of one to the top of the other, so thatthey stood at right angles. Five or six feet of the butt of thehorizontal one was projected beyond its lashings, and to this threelengths of rope were fastened, and trailed long ends in the dust as thestructure was held aloft and pushed and dragged into position. 

"Now!" shrieked the girl, red-hot, reliant, never still for a moment; "asmarny as can hold to each end there, and swing the blessed boom outtowards him!"

Fifty may have responded. They swarmed like ants about the upraised pole, and she drove them into position--a black knot of men hauling on thetriple cordage--left, right, and middle, like the ribs of a tent. 

They saw her meaning and fell into place with a shout. To hold theprojecting pole levered up at that height was a test of weight andmuscle, even without their man on the end of it; but there were plentymore to help pull, did their united force waver. 

"Jack!" screamed the girl again, in a wildness of excitement. "Only asecond longer, Jack! Hold on by your eyelids, and snatch the stickthe moment it comes agen thee!"

The horizontal spar pointed down the street. Slowly the men worked roundwith the ropes, and slowly the point of the pole turned in the directionof the chimney-stack and its forlorn burden. There was room and to sparefor the process in the wide gap made by the tumbled house. 

The crowd held its breath. Here and there a strangled sob was rent fromoverstrained lungs; here and there the wailing voice of a baby whinedup and subsided. 

The pole swung round with the toiling men--neared him on the ruin. Heturned his head and saw, shifted his position and staggered. Jenny gave apiercing screech. The men, thinking something was wrong, paused a moment. 

On the instant there came a crackling, tearing sound--a heaving roll--asplintering crash and uproar. The man aloft was seen to make a flyingleap--or was it only a hurled fragment of the falling chimney?--and whitedust rose in a fog once more and blotted out all the tragedy thatmight be enacting behind it. 

A horrible silence succeeded, then a single woman yelled, and her cry wasechoed by fifty hoarse voices. 

The noise came from those at the ropes. They were straining and tugging, and some of them bobbed up and down like peas on a drum. 

"More on ye! more on ye! We've hooked un, and he's got the pull of a seasarpint!"

The ropes became thick with striving men. The whole street resounded witha medley of cries. 

Then the point of the boom swung slowly out of the fog, and there was therescued man swinging and swaying at the end of it. 

They lowered him gradually into the street. But the strain upon them wasawful, and he came down with a run the last few yards. 

Then they let the angle of the gallows wheel over as it listed, and stoodand mopped their hot foreheads, while the crowd rushed for the poor shakysubject of all its turmoil. 

I could not get within fifty feet of him; or, I think, I should havegiven him and Jenny then and there all my fortune. 

Later, I made their acquaintance in a casual way, and compromised with myconscience by presenting them with a very pretty tea-service to help themset up house with. 

BLACK VENN

I

"George, " said Plancine. 

"Please say it again, " said George. 

She dimpled at him and obeyed, with the soft suggestion of accent thatwas like a tender confidence. Her feet were sunk in Devonshire grass;her name was on the birth register of a little Devonshire sea-town; yetthe sun of France was in her veins as surely as his caress was on herlips. 

Therefore she said "George" with a sweet dragging sound that greatlyfluttered the sensibilities of the person addressed, and not infrequentlyled them to alight, like Prince Dummling's queen bee, on the very mouthof that honeyed flower of speech. 

Now Plancine put her cheek on her George's rough sleeve, and said she, --

"I have a confession to make--about something a little silly. Consequently I have postponed it till now, when it is too dark foryou to see my face. "

"Never!" he murmured fervently. "A double cataract could not deprive meof that vision. It is printed here, Plancine. "

He smacked his chest hard on the left side. 

"Yet it sounds hollow, George?"

"Yes, " he said. "It is a sandwich-box, an empty one. I would not consignyour image to such a deplorable casket. My heart was what I meant. How Ihate sandwiches--misers shivering between sheets--a vile gastronomiceconomy!"

"Poor boy! I will make you little dough-cakes when you go apainting. "

"Plancine! Your image here, yes. But your dough-cakes--!"

"Then keep to your sandwiches, sir. "

"I must. But the person who invented them was no gentleman!"

"Papa would like to hear you say that. "

"Say what?"

"Admit the possibility of any social distinction. "

"It is only a question of sandwiches. "

"George, must you be a Chartist and believe in Feargus O'Connor?"

"My soul, I cannot go back on my principles, for all that the violets ofyour eyes have sprouted under the shadow of a venerable family-tree. "

"That is very prettily said. You may kiss my thumb-nail with the whitespot in it for luck. No, sir. That is presuming. Now I am snug, and youmay talk. "

"Plancine, I am a son of the people. I hold by my own. No doubt, if I hadblue blood to boast of, I should keep a vial of it in a prominent placeon the drawing-room mantelpiece. As it is, I confess my desire is tocarve for myself a name in art that shall be independent of alladventitious support; to answer to my vocation straight, upright, andmanly. "

"That is better than nobility--though I have pride in my own. I wish papathought so. Yet he has both himself. "

"The fine soul! For fifty years he has stood square to adversity with asmile on his face. Could I ever achieve that? Already I cry out onpoverty; because I want an unencumbered field for work, and--yes, oneother trifle. "

"One other trifle, George?"

He took Plancine's face between his hands and looked very lovingly intoher eyes. 

"I think I did the old man too much honour, " he said. "You nestling ofeighteen--what credit to scout misfortune with such a bird at one'sside!"

"Ah! but papa is sixty-nine and the bird but eighteen. "

"And eighteen years of heaven are a good education in happiness. "

So they coo'd, these two. The June scents of the little garden werewafted all about them. The moon had come up out of the sea, and, findinga trellis of branches over their heads, hung their young brows withcoronals of shadowy leaves, like the old dame she was, rummaging in hertrinket box for something for her favourites. 

In the dimly-luminous parlour (that smelt of folios and warm coffee) ofthe little dark house in the background, the figure of papa, poring atthe table over geological maps, was visible. 

Fifty years ago an _émigré_, denounced, proscribed, and escaped from theruin of a shattered society: here, in '49, a stately, large-boned man, placidly enjoying the consciousness of a serene dignity maintained at theexpense of much and prolonged self-effacement--this was papa. 

Grey hair, thinning but slightly near the temples; grey moustache andbeard pointed _de bouc_; flowered dressing-gown girdled about a heartas simple as a child's--this was papa, papa who grubbed over his ordnancesurveys while the young folks outside whispered of the stars. 

Right beneath them--the latter--a broad gully of the hills went plungingprecipitously, all rolled with leaf and flower, to the undercliff of softblue lias and the very roof ridges of King's Cobb, whose walls andchimneys, now snowed with light, fretted a scallop of the striding baythat swept the land here like a scythe. 

Plancine's village, a lofty appanage or suburb of this little seaboardtown at the hill-foot, seemed rather the parent stock from which theother had emancipated itself. For all down the steep slope that fledfrom Upper to King's Cobb was flung a _débris_ of houses that, like theice-fall of a glacier, would appear to have broken from the main bodyand gone careering into the valley below. 

It was in point of fact, however, but a subordinate hamlet--a hanginggarden for the jaded tourist in the dog days, when his soul stifled inthe oven of the sea-level cliffs--an eyrie for Plancine, and for George, the earnest painter, a Paradise before the fall. 

And now says George, "We have talked all round your confession, and stillI wait to give you absolution. "

"I will confess. I read it in one of papa's books that is called the_Talmud_. "

"Gracious me! you should be careful. What did you read?"

"That whoever wants to see the souls of the dead--"

"Plancine!"

"--must take finely sifted ashes, and strew them round his bed; and inthe morning he will see their foot-tracks, as a cock's. I did it. "

"You did?"

"Last night, yes. And what a business I had afterwards sweeping them up!"

"And did you see anything?"

"Something--yes--I think so. But it might have been mice. There areplenty up there. "

"Now you are an odd Plancine! What did you want with the ghosts of thedead?"

"I will tell you, you tall man; and you will not abuse my confidence. George, for all your gay independence, you must allow me a littlefamily pride and a little pathetic interest in the fortunes of the deadand gone De Jussacs. "

"It is Mademoiselle De Jussac that speaks. "

"It is Plancine, who knows so little:--that 'The Terror' would haveguillotined her father, a boy of fourteen: that he escaped to Prussia, toBelgium, to England; for six years always a wanderer and a fugitive: thathe was wrecked on this dear coast and, penniless, started life anewhere on his little accomplishments: that he made out a meagre existence, and late in the order of years (he was fifty) married an expatriatedcountrywoman, who died--George, my mother died when I was seventeenmonths old--and that is where I stop. My good, big father--so lonely, sopoor, and so silent! He tells me little. He speaks scantily of the past. But he was a Vicomte and is the last of his line; and I wanted the ghoststo explain to me so much that I have never learned. "

The moonlight fell upon her sweet, pale, uplifted face. There were tearsin her eyes that glittered like frost. 

But George, for all his love, showed a little masculine impatience. 

"Reserve is very good, " he said; "but we can't all be Lord Burleighs byholding our tongues. There is a sort of silence that is pregnant withnothing. "

"George, you cannot mean to insult my father?"

"No, dear. But why does he make such a mystery of his past? I would havemine as clear as a window, for all to look through. Why does he treat mewith such suave and courteous opposition--permitting my suit, yetwithholding his consent?"

"If you could be less democratic, dear--"

"It is a religion with me--not a brutal indulgence. "

"Perhaps he cannot dissociate the two. Then, he admires your genius andcommends your courage; but your poor purse hungers, my lover, and hedesires riches for his Plancine. "

"And Plancine?"

"She will die a grey-haired maid for thee, 'O Richard! O my king!'"

"My sweet--my bird--my wife! Oh, that you could be that now and kiss meon to fortune! I should be double-souled and inspired. A few months, andMadame la Vicomtesse should 'walk in silk attire. ' I flame at thepicture. Why will your father not yield you gracefully, instead of plyingus with that eternal enigma of Black Venn?"

"Because enthusiasm alone may not command wealth, " said a deep voice nearthem. 

Papa had come upon them unobserved. The young man wheeled and chargedwhile his blood was hot. 

"Mr. De Jussac, it is a shame to hold me in this unending suspense. "

"Is it not better than decided rejection?"

"I have served like Jacob. You cannot doubt my single-hearted devotion?"

"I doubt nothing, my George" (about _his_ accent there was no tendercompromise)--"I doubt nothing, but that the balance at your bankers' isexcessive. "

"You would not value Plancine at so much bullion?"

"But yes, my friend; for bullion is the algebraic formula that representscomfort. When Black Venn slips his apron--"

George made a gesture of impatience. 

"When Black Venn slips his apron, " repeated the father quietly, "I shallbe in a position to consider your suit. "

"That is tantamount to putting me off altogether. It is ungenerous. It ispreposterous. You may or may not be right; but it is simply farcical(Plancine cried, "George!"--but he went on warmly, nevertheless) to makeour happiness contingent on the possible tumbling down of a bit of oldcliff--an accident that, after all, may never happen. "

"Ah!" the quiet, strong voice went on; and in the old eyes turnedmoonwards one might have fancied one could read a certain pathos ofabnegation, or approaching self-sacrifice; "but it will, and shortly, forI prophesy. It was no idle cruelty of mine that first suggested thiscondition, but a natural reluctance to sign myself back to utterloneliness. "

Plancine cried, "Papa! papa!" and sprang into his arms. 

"A little patience, " said De Jussac, pressing his moustache to the roundhead, "and you will honour this weary prophet, I think. I was up on thecliff to-day. The great crack is ever widening. A bowling wind, a loudthunderstorm, and that apron of the hill will tear from its bondage andsink sweltering down the slopes. "

In the moment of speaking a tremor seized all his limbs, his eyes glaredmaniacal, his outstretched arm pointed seawards. 

"The guillotine!" he shrieked, "the guillotine!"

In the offing of the bay was a vessel making for the unseen harbourbelow. It stood up black against the moonlight, its sails and yardspresenting some fantastic resemblance to that engine of blood. 

George stepped back and hung his head embarrassed. He had more than oncebeen witness of a like seizure. It was the guillotine fright--the frightthat had smitten the boy of fourteen, and had pursued the man ever sincewith periodic attacks of illusion. Anything--a branch, a door-post, awindow, would suggest the hateful form during those periods--happilybrief--when the poor mind was temporarily unhinged. No doubt, in earlieryears, the fits had occurred frequently. Now they were rare, andgenerally, it seemed, attributable to some strong excitement or emotion. 

Plancine knew how to act. She put her hand over the frantic eyes, and ledthe old man stumbling up the garden path. She was going to sing to himfrom the little sweet folk-ballads of the old gay France before thetrouble came--

_"The king would wed his daughter Over the English sea;But never across the water Shall a husband come to me. "_

Love floated on the freshet of her voice straight into the heart of theyoung man who stood without. 

II

Perhaps at first it had not been the least of the bitterness in M. DeJussac's cup of calamity that his mere pride of name must adjust itselfto its altered conditions. That the Vicomte De Jussac should have beenexpatriated because he declined when called upon to contribute hisheart's blood to the red conduit in the Faubourg St. Antoine wascertainly an infamy, but one of which the very essence was thatunquestioning acknowledgment of his rank. That the land of his adoptionshould have dubbed him Mr. Jussuks--in stolid unconsciousness, too, ofthe solecism--was an outrage of a totally different order--an outrageonly to be condoned on the score that an impenetrable insular_gaucherie_, and not a malicious impertinence, was responsible for it. 

Mr. Jussuks had, however, outlived his sense of the injuriousappellation; had outlived much prejudice, the wear of poverty, his memoryof many things, and, very early, his scorn of the plebeian processes thatto the impecunious are a condition of living at all. He was certainly aman of courageous independence, inasmuch as from the hour of his settingfoot in England--and that was at the outset of the century--he hadcontrolled his own little fortunes without a hand to help him over thedeep places. 

Of his first struggles little is known but this--that for years, turningto account some small knowledge of draughtsmanship he had acquired, hefound employment in ladies' academies, of which there was a plenitude atthat date in King's Cobb. 

That, however, which brought him eventually into a modest prominence--notonly in that same beautiful but indifferently known watering-place (uponwhich he had happened, it would appear, fortuitously), but elsewhere andamongst men of a certain mark--was a discovery--or the practicalapplication of one--which in its result procured him a definite object inlife, together with the means to pursue it. 

Ammonites, and such small geological fry, were to be found by thethousand in the petrified mud beds of the Cobb region; but it was left tothe ingenuity, aided by good fortune, of the foreigner to unearth fromthe flaking and perishing cliffs of lias some of the earliest and finestspecimens of the ichthyo- and plesio-saurus that a past world has yieldedto the naturalists. 

Out of these the _émigré_ made money, and so was enabled to pursue andenlarge upon his researches. Presently he prospered into a competence, married (poor Mademoiselle Belleville, of the Silver Street Academy, whodied of typhoid at the end of a couple of summers), and so grew into thekindly old age of the absorbed and gentle naturalist, with his Plancinebudding at his side. 

What in all these fifty years had he forgotten? His name, his rank, hisvery origin? Much, no doubt. But that there was one haunting memory thathad dwelt with him throughout, his child and her lover were to learn--onememory, and that dreadful recurring illusion of the guillotine. 

"When Black Venn slips his apron, I shall be in a position to consideryour suit. "

Surely that was an odd and enigmatical condition, entirely remote fromthe subject at issue? Yet from the moment of the first impassionedpleadings of the stricken George, De Jussac had insisted upon it as onefrom which there should be no appeal. 

Now the Black Venn referred to was a great mound of lias that rolled upand inland, in the far sweep of the bay, from the giddy margin of thelower ruin of cliffs. These--mere compressed mountains of mud, blown bythe winds and battered by the sea--were in a constant state of yawn andcollapse. Yard by yard they yielded to the scourge of Time, andlandslides were of common occurrence. 

All along the middle slope of Black Venn itself, a wide, deep fissure, dark and impenetrable, had stretched from ages unrecorded. But theeventual opening-out of this crevasse, and the consequent subsidence ofthe incline, or apron, below it, had been foretold by Mr. De Jussac; andthis, in fact, was the condition to which he had alluded. 

III

"Mr. De Jussac! do you hear me?"

"I am coming, my friend. "

The light shining steadily through a front window of the cottageflickered and shifted. The young man in the rain and storm outside dancedwith impatience. 

Suddenly the door opened, and Plancine's father stood there, candle inhand. 

"What is it, my George?"

"The hill, sir--the hill! It's fallen! You were right. You must stand byyour word. Black Venn has slipped his apron!"

"My God, no!"

There were despair and exultation in his voice. 

"My God, no!" he whispered again, and dived into a cupboard under thestair. 

Thence he reappeared with a horn lantern and his old blue cloak. 

"Come, then!" he cried. "My hour is upon me!"

"Mr. De Jussac, it will wait till the morning. "

"No, no, no! Do you trifle with your destiny? It has happenedopportunely, while all are within doors and we have a clear field. How doyou know? have you seen? Is it possible to descend to it from above?"

"I passed there less than an hour ago. It is possible, I am sure. "

They set off hurriedly through the rain-beaten night. Not a word passedbetween them as they left the village and struck into the high-valleyroad that ran past, at a moderate distance, the head of the bay. DeJussac strode rapidly in advance of his companion. His long cloak whirledin the blast; it flogged his gaunt limbs all set to intense action. Heseemed uplifted, translated--like one in whom the very article of alife-long faith, or monomania, is about to be justified. 

Toiling onward, like driven cattle, they swerved from the road presentlyand breasted a sharp incline. Their boots squelched on the sodden turf;the wind bore on them heavily. 

George saw the dancing lanthorn go up the slope in front of him like awill-o'-the-wisp--stop, and swing steady, heard the loud cry ofjubilation that issued from the withered throat. 

"It is true! The moment is realized!"

They stood together on the verge of the upper lip of the fissure. It wasa cliff now, twenty, thirty feet to its base. The lower ground hadfallen like a dead jaw; had slipped--none so great a distance--down theslope leading to the under-cliff, and lay a billowing mass subsided uponitself. 

De Jussac would stand not an instant. 

"We must climb down--somehow, anyhow!" he cried feverishly. "We mustsearch all along what was once the bottom of the cleft. "

"It is a risk, sir. Why not wait till the morning?"

"No, no! now! My God! I demand it. Others may forestall us if we delay. See, my friend, I wish but my own; and what proof of right have I ifanother should snatch the treasure?"

"The treasure?"

"It is our fortune that lies there--yours, and mine, and the littlePlancine's. Do I know what I say? Hurry, hurry, hurry! while my heartdoes not burst. "

He forced the lanthorn into the young man's hands. He was panting andsobbing like a child. Before the other realized his intention, he hadflung himself upon his hands and knees, had slipped over the edge, andwas scrambling down the broken wall of lias. 

There was nothing for George but to take his own life in hand and humourhis venerated elder. He followed with the lanthorn, thinking of Plancinea little, and hoping he should fall on a soft place. 

But they got down in safety, breathing hard and extremely dirty. Caution, it is true, reacts very commonly upon itself. 

The moment his companion's feet touched bottom, De Jussac snatched thelight from his hand, roughly enough to send him off his balance, and wentscurrying to and fro along the face of the cliff like a mad thing. 

"I cannot find it!" he cried, rushing back after an interval--nervous, inan agony of restlessness--a very pitiable old man. 

George spoke up from the ground. 

"Find what?" said he, feeling all sopped and dazed. 

"The box--the casket! It could never perish. It was of sheet-iron. Look, look, my friend! Your eyes are younger than mine--a box, a foot long, ofhard iron!"

"I am sitting upon something hard, " said George. 

He sprang to his feet and took the lanthorn. 

"Bones, " said he, peering down. "Some old mastodon, I expect. Is thisyour treasure?"

De Jussac was glaring. His head drooped lower and lower. His lips wereparted, and the line of strong white teeth showed between them. Hisvoice, when he spoke, was quite fearful in its low intensity. 

"Bones--yes, and human. Where they lie, the other must be near. Ah, Lacombe, Lacombe; you will yield me my own at last!"

He was shaking a slow finger at the poor remnants--a rib or two, the halfof a yellow skull. 

Suddenly he was down on his knees, tearing at the black, thick soil, diving into it, tossing it hither and thither. 

A pause, a rending exclamation, and he was on his feet again with ascream of ecstasy. An oblong casket, rusty, corroded, but unbroken, wasin his hand. 

"Now, " he whispered, sibilant through the wind, controlling himself, though he was shaking from head to foot, "now to return as we have come. Not a word, not a word till we have this safe in the cottage!"

They found, after some search, a difficult way up. By-and-by they stoodonce more on the lip of the fall, and paused for breath. 

It was at this very instant that De Jussac dropped the box beside him andthrew up his hands. 

"The guillotine!" he shrieked, and fell headlong into the pit he had justissued from. 

IV

The poor bandaged figure; the approaching death; the dog whining softlyin the yard. 

"I am dying, my little Plancine?"

The girl's forehead was bowed on the homely quilt. 

"Nay, cry not, little one! I go very happy. That (he indicated by amotion of his eyelids the fatal box, which, yet unopened, lay on a tableby the sunny window) shall repay thee for thy long devotion, for thypoverty, and for thy brave sweetness with the old papa. "

"No, no, no!"

"But they are diamonds, Plancine--such diamonds, my bird. They haveflashed at Versailles, at the little Trianon. They were honoured to lieon the breast of a beautiful and courageous woman--thine aunt, Plancine;the most noble the Comtesse de la Morne. She gave her wealth, almosther life, for her king--all but her diamonds. It was at Brussels, whitherI had escaped from The Terror--I, a weak and desolate boy of butfourteen. I lived with her, in her common, cheap lodging. For five yearswe made out our friendless and deserted existence in company. In truth, we were an embarrassment, and they looked at us askance. Long after hermind failed her, the memory of her own former beauty dwelt with her; yetshe could not comprehend but that it was still a talisman to conjurewith. Even to the end she would deck herself and coquet to her glass. Butshe was good and faithful, Plancine; and, at the last, when she wasdying, she gave me this box. 'It contains all that is left to me of myformer condition, ' she said. 'It shall make thy fortune for thee inEngland, my nephew, whither thou must journey when poor Dorine isunderground. ' By that I knew it was her cherished diamonds she bequeathedme. 'They do not want thee here, ' she said. 'Thou must take boat forEngland when I am gone. '

"But George, my friend!"

The young man was standing sorrowful by the open window. He could haveseen the sailing-boats in the bay, the sailing clouds in the sky placidlyfloating over a world of serene and verdurous loveliness. But his visionwas all inward, of the piteous calm, following storm and disaster, inwhich the dying voice from the bed was like the lapping of little waves. 

He came at once and stood over Plancine, not daring to touch her. 

"It was not wilfulness, but my great love, " said the broken, gentlevoice, "that made the condition. All of you I cannot extol, knowing whatI have known. But you are an honest gentleman and a true, my brave; andyou shall make this dearest a noble husband. "

Waveringly George stole his hand towards the bowed head and let it restthere. 

From the battered face a smile broke like flowers from a blasted soil. 

"Withholding my countenance only as I foresaw the means to enrich youboth were approaching my grasp, I waited for the hill to break away thatI might recover my casket. It was there--it is here; and now my Plancineshall never know poverty more, or her husband restrict the scope of hisso admirable art on the score of necessity. "

He saw the eyes questioning what the lips would not ask. 

"But how I lost it?" he said. "I took the box; I obeyed her behests. Themoment was acute; the times peremptory. I sailed for England, hurriedlyand secretly, never to this day having feasted my eyes on what lieswithin there. With me went Lacombe, Madame's 'runner' in the old days--astolid Berrichon, who had lived upon her bounty to the end. The rogue!the ingrate! We were wrecked upon this coast; we plunged and came ashore. I know not who were lost or saved; but Lacombe and I clung together andwere thrown upon the land, the box still in my grasp. We climbed thecliffs where a stair had been cut; we broke eastwards from the upperslopes and staggered on through the blown darkness. Suddenly Lacombestopped. The day was faint then on the watery horizon; and in theghostly light I saw his face and read the murder in it. We were standingon the verge of the cleft under Black Venn. 'No further!' he whispered. 'You must go down there!' He snatched the box from my hand. In theinstant of his doing so, stricken by the death terror, the affection towhich I was then much subject seized me. I screamed, 'My God! theguillotine!' Taken by surprise, he started back, staggered, and went downcrashing to the fate he had designed for me. I seemed to lie prostratefor hours, while his moans came up fainter and fainter till they ceased. Then I rose and faced life, lonely, friendless, and a beggar. "

The restless wandering of his eyes travelled over his daughter's head tothe rusty casket by the window. 

"It was very well, " he whispered. "I thank my God that He has permittedme at the perfect moment to realize my investment in that dead rascal'sdishonesty. Have I ever desired wealth save for my little _pouponne_here? And I have sorely tried thee, my George. But the old naturalisthad such faith in his prediction. Now--"

His vision was glazing; the muscles of his face were quietly settling tothe repose that death only can command. 

"Now, I would see the fruit of my prophecy; would see it all hung on theneck, in the hair of my child, that I may die rejoicing. Canst thou forcethe casket, George?"

The young man turned with a stifled groan. Some tools lay on a shelf hardby. He grasped a chisel and went to his task with shaking hands. 

The box was all eaten and corroded. It was a matter of but a few secondsto prise it open. The lid fell back on the table with a rusty clang. 

"Ah!" cried the dying man. "What now? Dost thou see them? Quick! quick!to glorify this little head! Are they not exquisite?"

George was gazing down with a dull, vacant feeling at his heart. 

"Are they not?" repeated the voice, in terrible excitement. 

"They--Mr. De Jussac, they are loveliness itself. Plancine, I will nottouch them. You must be the first. "

He strode to the kneeling girl; lifted, almost roughly dragged her to herfeet. 

"Come!" he said; and, supporting her across the room, whispered madly inher ear: "Pretend! For God's sake, pretend!"

Plancine's swimming eyes looked down, looked upon a litter of perishedrags of paper, and, lying in the midst of the rubbish, an ancient stainedand cockled miniature of a powdered Louis _Seize_ coquette. 

This was all. This was the treasure the old crazed vanity had thoughtsufficient to build her nephew his fortune. 

The diamonds! Probably these had long before been sacrificed to thearmies ineffectively manoeuvring for the destruction of Monsieur "Veto's"enemies. 

Plancine lifted her head. Thereafter George never ceased to recall with aglad pride the nobility that had shone in her eyes. 

"My papa!" she cried softly, going swiftly to the bed; "they arebeautiful as the stars that glittered over the old untroubled France!"

De Jussac sprang up on his pillow. 

"The guillotine!" he cried. "The beams break into flowers! The axe is ashaft of light!"

And so the glowing blade descended. 

AN EDDY ON THE FLOOR

PART I

OF POLYHISTOR'S NARRATIVE

WRITTEN FOR, BUT NEVER INSERTED IN, THE ----- FAMILY MAGAZINE

The eyes of Polyhistor--as he sat before the fire at night--took in thetawdry surroundings of his lodging-house room with nothing of that apathyof resignation to his personal [Greek: anankê] which of all moods is toFortune, the goddess of spontaneity, the most antipathetic. Indeed, he felt his wit, like Romeo's, to be of cheveril; and his conviction thatit needed only the pull of circumstance to stretch it "from an inchnarrow to an ell broad" expressed but the very wooing quality of aconstitutional optimism. 

Now this inherent optimism is at least a serviceable weapon when it takesthe form of self-reliance. It is always at hand in an emergency--a guardof honour to the soul. The loneliness of individual life must learnself-respect from within, not without; and were all creeds to be mixed, that truism should be found their precipitate. 

Therefore Polyhistor was content to draw grass-green rep curtainsacross window-panes sloughed with wintry sleet; to place his feet upon arug flayed of colour to it dusty sinews; to admit to his closefellowship--and find a familiar comfort in them, too--three separatelithographs of affected babies inviting any canine confidences but thebite one desired for them, and a dismal daguerreotype of his landlady'sdeceased husband, slowly perishing in pegtops and a yellow fog ofdespondency, out of which only his boots and a very tall hat frownedinsistent, the tabernacles of enduring respectability:--he was content, because he knew these were only incidents in his career--the slums to befirst traversed on a journey before the rounding breadths of open countrywere reached, --and the station in life he purposed stopping at eventuallywas the terminus of prosperity, intellectual and material. 

With no present good fortune but the capacity for desiring it; with theright to affix a letter or so--like grace after skilly--to his name; withthe consciousness that, having overcome theoretical pharmaceuticsmasterfully, he was now combatting practical dispensing slavishly; withfull confidence in his social position (he stood under the shadow of"high connections, " like the little winged "Victory" in a conqueror'shand, he chose to think) to help him to eventual distinction, he toastedhis toes that sour winter evening and reviewed in comfort an army ofprospects. 

Also his thoughts reverted indulgently to the incidents and experiencesof the previous night. 

He had had the pleasure of an invitation to one of those reunions orséances at the house, in a fashionable quarter, of his distantconnection, Lady Barbara Grille, whereat it was his hostess's humourto gather together those many birds of alien feather and incongruoushabit that will flock from the hedgerows to the least little flatteringcrumb of attention. And scarce one of them but thinks the simple feast isspread for him alone. And with so cheap a bait may a title lure. 

Lady Barbara, to do her justice, trades upon her position only in so faras it shapes itself the straight road to her desires. She is a carpetadventurer--an explorer amongst the nerves of moral sensation, to whomthe discovery of an untrodden mental tract is a pure delight, and themore delightful the more ephemeral. She flits from guest to guest, shooting out to each a little proboscis, as it were, and happy if itspoint touches a speck of honey. She gathers from all, and stores thesweet agglomerate, let us hope, to feed upon it in the winter of herlife, when the hive of her busy brain shall be thatched with snow. 

That reference to so charming a personality should be in this place adigression is Polyhistor's unhappiness. She affects his narrative onlyinasmuch as he happened to meet at her house a gentleman who for a timeexerted a considerable influence over his fortunes. 

 * * * * *

Here Polyhistor's narrative must give place to certain editorialmarginalia by Miss Lucy ----, who "runs" the ---- Family Magazine:--

"Polyhistor, indeed!" she writes. "The conceit of some people! He seemsto take himself for a sort of _Admirable Crichton_, and all because hischance meeting with the gentleman referred to (a very _interesting_person, who is, I understand, reforming our prisons) brought him theoffer of an appointment quite beyond his deserts. I was very glad to hearof it, however, and I asked the creature to contribute a paper recordinghis first impressions of _this notable man_; instead of which he beginswith an opinionated rigmarole about himself, and goes on from bad toworse by describing a long conversation he had about prison reform withthat horrid, masculine Mrs. C----, whom all the officers call 'Charlie, 'and who thinks that for men to grow humane is a sign of their_decadence_. _Of course_ I shall 'cut' the whole of their talk together(it is a blessed privilege to be an editor), and jump to the part where_Polyhistor_ (!) describes the _notable person's_ visit to him, which wasdue to his (the N. P. 's) having the night before overheard some of theconversation _between those two_. "

 * * * * *

POLYHISTOR'S NARRATIVE (_continued_). 

Now as Polyhistor sat, he humoured his recollection (in the intervals ofscribbling verses to the _beaux yeux_ of a certain Miss L----) with someof "Charlie's" characteristic last-night utterances. 

She had dated man's decadence from the moment when he began to"poor-fellow" irreclaimable savagery on the score of heredity. 

She had repudiated the old humbug of sex superiority because she had seenit fall on its face to howl over a trodden worm, with the result thatit discovered itself hollow behind, like the elf-maiden. 

She had said: "Once you taught us divinely--_argumentum baculinum_, " saidshe; "(for you are the sons of God, you know). But you have since soinsisted upon the Rights of Humanity that we have learned ourselves inthe phrase, and that the earthy have the best right to precedence on theearth. "

And thereupon Charlie had launched into abuse of what she called thelatest masculine fad--prison reform, to wit--and a heated discussionbetween her and Polyhistor had ensued, in the midst of which she hadhappened to glance behind her, to find that very notable person who isthe subject of this narrative vouchsafing a silent attention to herdiatribe. And then--

But at this period to his cogitations Polyhistor's landlady entered witha card, which she presented to his consideration:--

MAJOR JAMES SHRIKE, H. M. PRISON, D----. 

All astonishment, Polyhistor bade his visitor up. 

He entered briskly, fur-collared, hat in hand, and bowed as he stood onthe threshold. He was a very short man--snub-nosed; rusty-whiskered;indubitably and unimpressively a cockney in appearance. He might havewalked out of a Cruikshank etching. 

Polyhistor was beginning, "May I inquire--" when the other took him upwith a vehement frankness that he found engaging at once. 

"This is a great intrusion. Will you pardon me? I heard some remarks ofyours last night that deeply interested me. I obtained your name andaddress of our hostess, and took the liberty of--"

"Oh! pray be seated. Say no more. My kinswoman's introduction isall-sufficient. I am happy in having caught your attention in so motleya crowd. "

"She doesn't--forgive the impertinence--take herself seriously enough. "

"Lady Barbara? Then you've found her out?"

"Ah!--you're not offended?"

"Not in the least. "

"Good. It was a motley assemblage, as you say. Yet I'm inclined to thinkI found my pearl in the oyster. I'm afraid I interrupted--eh?"

"No, no, not at all. Only some idle scribbling. I'd finished. "

"You are a poet?"

"Only a lunatic. I haven't taken my degree. "

"Ah! it's a noble gift--the gift of song; precious through its rarity. "

Polyhistor caught a note of emotion in his visitor's voice, and glancedat him curiously. 

"Surely, " he thought, "that vulgar, ruddy little face is transfigured. "

"But, " said the stranger, coming to earth, "I am lingering beside themark. I must try to justify my solecism in manners by a straightreference to the object of my visit. That is, in the first instance, amatter of business. "

"Business!"

"I am a man with a purpose, seeking the hopefullest means to anend. Plainly: if I could procure you the post of resident doctor atD---- gaol, would you be disposed to accept it?"

Polyhistor looked his utter astonishment. 

"I can affect no surprise at yours, " said the visitor, attentivelyregarding Polyhistor. "It is perfectly natural. Let me forestall someunnecessary expression of it. My offer seems unaccountable to you, seeingthat we never met until last night. But I don't move entirely in thedark. I have ventured in the interval to inform myself as to the detailsof your career. I was entirely one with much of your expression ofopinion as to the treatment of criminals, in which you controverted thecrude and unpleasant scepticism of the lady you talked with. " (Poor NewCharlie!) "Combining the two, I come to the immediate conclusion that youare the man for my purpose. "

"You have dumbfounded me. I don't know what to answer. You have views, Iknow, as to prison treatment. Will you sketch them? Will you talk on, while I try to bring my scattered wits to a focus?"

"Certainly I will. Let me, in the first instance, recall to you a fewwords of your own. They ran somewhat in this fashion: Is not the man ofpractical genius the man who is most apt at solving the little problemsof resourcefulness in life? Do you remember them?"

"Perhaps I do, in a cruder form. "

"They attracted me at once. It is upon such a postulate I base mypractice. Their moral is this: To know the antidote the moment the snakebites. That is to have the intuition of divinity. We shall rise to itsome day, no doubt, and climb the hither side of the new Olympus. Whoknows? Over the crest the spirit of creation may be ours. "

Polyhistor nodded, still at sea, and the other went on with a smile:--

"I once knew a world-famous engineer with whom I used to breakfastoccasionally. He had a patent egg-boiler on the table, with a littledouble-sided ladle underneath to hold the spirit. He complained that hisegg was always undercooked. I said, 'Why not reverse the ladle so asto bring the deeper cup uppermost?' He was charmed with my perspicacity. The solution had never occurred to him. You remember, too, no doubt, thestory of Coleridge and the horse collar. We aim too much at greatdevelopments. If we cultivate resourcefulness, the rest will follow. Shall I state my system _in nuce_? It is to encourage this spirit ofresourcefulness. "

"Surely the habitual criminal has it in a marked degree?"

"Yes; but abnormally developed in a single direction. His one object isto out-manoeuvre in a game of desperate and immoral chances. The tacticalspirit in him has none of the higher ambition. It has felt itself in thedegree only that stops at defiance. "

"That is perfectly true. "

"It is half self-conscious of an individuality that instinctively assumesthe hopelessness of a recognition by duller intellects. Leaning toresentment through misguided vanity, it falls 'all oblique. ' What is thecure for this? I answer, the teaching of a divine egotism. The subjectmust be led to a pure devotion to self. What he wishes to respect he mustbe taught to make beautiful and interesting. The policy of sacrifice toothers has so long stunted his moral nature because it is an hypocriticalpolicy. We are responsible to ourselves in the first instance; and toargue an eternal system of blind self-sacrifice is to undervalue thefine gift of individuality. In such he sees but an indefensible policyof force applied to the advantage of the community. He is told to begood--not that he may morally profit, but that others may not sufferinconvenience. "

Polyhistor was beginning to grasp, through his confusion, a certain clueof meaning in his visitor's rapid utterance. The stranger spoke fluently, but in the dry, positive voice that characterizes men of will. 

"Pray go on, " Polyhistor said; "I am digesting in silence. "

"We must endeavour to lead him to respect of self by showing him what hismind is capable of. I argue on no sectarian, no religious grounds even. Is it possible to make a man's self his most precious possession? Anyhow, I work to that end. A doctor purges before building up with a tonic. Ieliminate cant and hypocrisy, and then introduce self-respect. It isn'tenough to employ a man's hands only. Initiation in some labour thatshould prove wholesome and remunerative is a redeeming factor, but itisn't all. His mind must work also, and awaken to its capacities. If itrusts, the body reverts to inhuman instincts. "

"May I ask how you--?"

"By intercourse--in my own person or through my officials. I wish to haveonly those about me who are willing to contribute to my designs, andwith whom I can work in absolute harmony. All my officers are chosen tothat end. No doubt a dash of constitutional sentimentalism gives colourto my theories. I get it from a human tract in me that circumstances haveobliged me to put a hoarding round. "

"I begin to gather daylight. "

"Quite so. My patients are invited to exchange views with their guardiansin a spirit of perfect friendliness; to solve little problems ofpractical moment; to acquire the pride of self-reliance. We havecompetitions, such as certain newspapers open to their readers, in asimple form. I draw up the questions myself. The answers give me insightinto the mental conditions of the competitors. Upon insight I proceed. Iam fortunate in private means, and I am in a position to offer modestprizes to the winners. Whenever such an one is discharged, he findsawaiting him the tools most handy to his vocation. I bid him go forthin no pharisaical spirit, and invite him to communicate with me. I wishthe shadow of the gaol to extend no further than the road whereon itlies. Henceforth, we are acquaintances with a common interest at heart. Isn't it monstrous that a state-fixed degree of misconduct should earn aman social ostracism? Parents are generally inclined to rule extratenderness towards a child whose peccadilloes have brought him awhipping. For myself, I have no faith in police supervision. Give aculprit his term and have done with it. I find the majority who come backto me are ticket-of-leave men. 

"Have I said enough? I offer you the reversion of the post. The presentholder of it leaves in a month's time. Please to determine here and atonce. "

"Very good. I have decided. "

"You will accept?"

"Yes. "

 * * * * *

So far wrote Polyhistor in the bonny days of early manhood--an attemptmade in a spasm of enthusiasm inspired in him and humoured by his mostengaging Mentor, to record his first impressions of a notable personalitynot many days after its introduction to him. He has never taken up thetale again until now, when an insistent sense, as of a task leftunfinished, compels him to the effort. Over his sweet Mentor the grasslies thick, and flowers of aged stalk bloom perennially, and "Oh, thedifference to me!"

To _me_, for it is time to drop the poor conceit, the pseudonym that onceserved its little purpose to awaken tender derision. 

I take up the old and stained manuscript, with its marginalia, that arelike the dim call from a far-away voice, and I know that, so I am drivento record the sequel to that gay introduction, it must be in a spirit ofsombreness most deadly by contrast. I look at the faded opening words. The fire of the first line of the narrative is long out; the grate iscold some forty years--forty years!--and I think I have been a littlechill during all that time. But, though the room rustle with phantoms andmenace stalk in the retrospect, I shall acquit my conscience of itsburden, refusing to be bullied by the counsel of a destiny thatsubpoena'd me entirely against my will. 

PART II

OF POLYHISTOR'S NARRATIVE

CONTINUED AND FINISHED AFTER A LAPSE OF FORTY YEARS

With my unexpected appointment as doctor to D---- gaol, I seemed tohave put on the seven-league boots of success. No doubt it was anextraordinary degree of good fortune, even to one who had looked forwardwith a broad view of confidence; yet, I think, perhaps on account of thevery casual nature of my promotion, I never took the post entirelyseriously. 

At the same time I was fully bent on justifying my little cockneypatron's choice by a resolute subscription to his theories of prisonmanagement. 

Major James Shrike inspired me with a curious conceit of impertinentrespect. In person the very embodiment of that insignificant vulgarity, without extenuating circumstances, which is the type in caricature of theultimate cockney, he possessed a force of mind and an earnestness ofpurpose that absolutely redeemed him on close acquaintanceship. I foundhim all he had stated himself to be, and something more. 

He had a noble object always in view--the employment of sane andhumanitarian methods in the treatment of redeemable criminals, and hestrove towards it with completely untiring devotion. He was of those whonever insist beyond the limits of their own understanding, clear-sightedin discipline, frank in relaxation, an altruist in the larger sense. 

His undaunted persistence, as I learned, received ample illustration somefew years prior to my acquaintance with him, when--his system beingexperimental rather than mature--a devastating endemic of typhoid in theprison had for the time stultified his efforts. He stuck to his post; butso virulent was the outbreak that the prison commissioners judged acomplete evacuation of the building and overhauling of the drainage tobe necessary. As a consequence, for some eighteen months--during thirteenof which the Governor and his household remained sole inmates of thesolitary pile (so sluggishly do we redeem our condemned socialbog-lands)--the "system" stood still for lack of material to mould. Atthe end of over a year of stagnation, a contract was accepted andworkmen put in, and another five months saw the prison reordered forpractical purposes. 

The interval of forced inactivity must have sorely tried the patience ofthe Governor. Practical theorists condemned to rust too often eat outtheir own hearts. Major Shrike never referred to this period, and, indeed, laboriously snubbed any allusion to it. 

He was, I have a shrewd notion, something of an officially pettedreformer. Anyhow, to his abolition of the insensate barbarism of crankand treadmill in favour of civilizing methods no opposition was offered. Solitary confinement--a punishment outside all nature to a gregariousrace--found no advocate in him. "A man's own suffering mind, " he argued, "must be, of all moral food, the most poisonous for him to feed on. Surround a scorpion with fire and he stings himself to death, they say. Throw a diseased soul entirely upon its own resources and moral suicideresults. "

To sum up: his nature embodied humanity without sentimentalism, firmnesswithout obstinacy, individuality without selfishness; his activity wasboundless, his devotion to his system so real as to admit no utilitariansophistries into his scheme of personal benevolence. Before I had beenwith him a week, I respected him as I had never respected man before. 

 * * * * *

One evening (it was during the second month of my appointment) we weresitting in his private study--a dark, comfortable room lined with books. It was an occasion on which a new characteristic of the man was offeredto my inspection. 

A prisoner of a somewhat unusual type had come in that day--aspiritualistic medium, convicted of imposture. To this person I casuallyreferred. 

"May I ask how you propose dealing with the new-comer?"

"On the familiar lines. "

"But, surely--here we have a man of superior education, of imaginationeven?"

"No, no, no! A hawker's opportuneness; that describes it. These fellowswould make death itself a vulgarity. "

"You've no faith in their--"

"Not a tittle. Heaven forfend! A sheet and a turnip are poetry to theirmanifestations. It's as crude and sour soil for us to work on as any Iknow. We'll cart it wholesale. "

"I take you--excuse my saying so--for a supremely sceptical man. "

"As to what?"

"The supernatural. "

There was no answer during a considerable interval. Presently it came, with deliberate insistence:--

"It is a principle with me to oppose bullying. We are here for a definitepurpose--his duty plain to any man who wills to read it. There may bedisembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can nolonger control. If there are, mine, which is not yet divorced from itsmeans to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsiblewhimsey, emanating from a place whose denizens appear to be actuated by amere frivolous antagonism to all human order and progress. "

"But supposing you, a murderer, to be haunted by the presentment of yourvictim?"

"I will imagine that to be my case. Well, it makes no difference. Myinterest is with the great human system, in one of whose veins I am acirculating drop. It is my business to help to keep the system sound, to do my duty without fear or favour. If disease--say a fouledconscience--contaminates me, it is for me to throw off the incubus, not accept it, and transmit the poison. Whatever my lapses of nature, Iowe it to the entire system to work for purity in my allotted sphere, andnot to allow any microbe bugbear to ride me roughshod, to the detrimentof my fellow drops. "

I laughed. 

"It should be for you, " I said, "to learn to shiver, like the boy in thefairy tale. "

"I cannot", he answered, with a peculiar quiet smile; "and yet prisons, above all places, should be haunted. "

 * * * * *

Very shortly after his arrival I was called to the cell of the medium, F----. He suffered, by his own statement, from severe pains in the head. 

I found the man to be nervous, anemic; his manner characterized by a sortof hysterical effrontery. 

"Send me to the infirmary", he begged. "This isn't punishment, buttorture. "

"What are your symptoms?"

"I see things; my case has no comparison with others. To a man of mysuper-sensitiveness close confinement is mere cruelty. "

I made a short examination. He was restless under my hands. 

"You'll stay where you are", I said. 

He broke out into violent abuse, and I left him. 

Later in the day I visited him again. He was then white and sullen; butunder his mood I could read real excitement of some sort. 

"Now, confess to me, my man", I said, "what do you see?"

He eyed me narrowly, with his lips a little shaky. 

"Will you have me moved if I tell you?"

"I can give no promise till I know. "

He made up his mind after an interval of silence. 

"There's something uncanny in my neighbourhood. Who's confined in thenext cell--there, to the left?"

"To my knowledge it's empty. "

He shook his head incredulously. 

"Very well, " I said, "I don't mean to bandy words with you"; and I turnedto go. 

At that he came after me with a frightened choke. 

"Doctor, your mission's a merciful one. I'm not trying to sauce you. ForGod's sake have me moved! I can see further than most, I tell you!"

The fellow's manner gave me pause. He was patently and beyond the prideof concealment terrified. 

"What do you see?" I repeated stubbornly. 

"It isn't that I see, but I know. The cell's not empty!"

I stared at him in considerable wonderment. 

"I will make inquiries, " I said. "You may take that for a promise. If thecell proves empty, you stop where you are. "

I noticed that he dropped his hands with a lost gesture as I left him. Iwas sufficiently moved to accost the warder who awaited me on the spot. 

"Johnson, " I said, "is that cell--"

"Empty, sir, " answered the man sharply and at once. 

Before I could respond, F---- came suddenly to the door, which I stillheld open. 

"You lying cur!" he shouted. "You damned lying cur!"

The warder thrust the man back with violence. 

"Now you, 49, " he said, "dry up, and none of your sauce!" and he bangedto the door with a sounding slap, and turned to me with a lowering face. The prisoner inside yelped and stormed at the studded panels. 

"That cell's empty, sir, " repeated Johnson. 

"Will you, as a matter of conscience, let me convince myself? I promisedthe man. "

"No, I can't. "

"You can't?"

"No, sir. "

"This is a piece of stupid discourtesy. You can have no reason, ofcourse?"

"I can't open it--that's all. "

"Oh, Johnson! Then I must go to the fountain-head. "

"Very well, sir. "

Quite baffled by the man's obstinacy, I said no more, but walked off. Ifmy anger was roused, my curiosity was piqued in proportion. 

 * * * * *

I had no opportunity of interviewing the Governor all day, but at night Ivisited him by invitation to play a game of piquet. 

He was a man without "incumbrances"--as a severe conservatism designatesthe _lares_ of the cottage--and, at home, lived at his ease and indulgedhis amusements without comment. 

I found him "tasting" his books, with which the room was well lined, anddrawing with relish at an excellent cigar in the intervals of thecourses. 

He nodded to me, and held out an open volume in his left hand. 

"Listen to this fellow, " he said, tapping the page with his fingers:--

"'The most tolerable sort of Revenge, is for those wrongs which there isno Law to remedy: But then, let a man take heed, the Revenge be such, asthere is no law to punish: Else, a man's Enemy, is still before hand, andit is two for one. Some, when they take Revenge, are Desirous the partyshould know, whence it cometh. This is the more Generous. For the Delightseemeth to be, not so much in doing the Hurt, as in making the Partyrepent: But Base and Crafty _Cowards are like the Arrow that flyeth inthe Dark. Cosmus, Duke of Florence, had a Desperate Saying againstPerfidious or Neglecting Friends, as if these wrongs were unpardonable. You shall reade (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our Enemies:But you never read, that we are commanded, to forgive our Friends_. '

"Is he not a rare fellow?"

"Who?" said I. 

"Francis Bacon, who screwed his wit to his philosophy, like a hammer-headto its handle, and knocked a nail in at every blow. How many of ourfriends round about here would be picking oakum now if they had made agospel of that quotation?"

"You mean they take no heed that the Law may punish for that for which itgives no remedy?"

"Precisely; and specifically as to revenge. The criminal, from themurderer to the petty pilferer, is actuated solely by the spirit ofvengeance--vengeance blind and speechless--towards a system that forceshim into a position quite outside his natural instincts. "

"As to that, we have left Nature in the thicket. It is hopeless huntingfor her now. "

"We hear her breathing sometimes, my friend. Otherwise Her Majesty'sprison locks would rust. But, I grant you, we have grown so unfamiliarwith her that we call her simplest manifestations _super_naturalnowadays. "

"That reminds me. I visited F---- this afternoon. The man was in a queerway--not foxing, in my opinion. Hysteria, probably. "

"Oh! What was the matter with him?"

"The form it took was some absurd prejudice about the next cell--number47, He swore it was not empty--was quite upset about it--said therewas some infernal influence at work in his neighbourhood. Nerves, hefinds, I suppose, may revenge themselves on one who has made a habit ofplaying tricks with them. To satisfy him, I asked Johnson to open thedoor of the next cell--"

"Well?"

"He refused. "

"It is closed by my orders. "

"That settles it, of course. The manner of Johnson's refusal was a bituncivil, but--"

He had been looking at me intently all this time--so intently that I wasconscious of a little embarrassment and confusion. His mouth was set likea dash between brackets, and his eyes glistened. Now his featuresrelaxed, and he gave a short high neigh of a laugh. 

"My dear fellow, you must make allowances for the rough old lurcher. Hewas a soldier. He is all cut and measured out to the regimental pattern. With him Major Shrike, like the king, can do no wrong. Did I ever tellyou he served under me in India? He did; and, moreover, I saved his lifethere. "

"In an engagement?"

"Worse--from the bite of a snake. It was a mere question of will. I toldhim to wake and walk, and he did. They had thought him already in rigormortis; and, as for him--well, his devotion to me since has been singleto the last degree. "

"That's as it should be. "

"To be sure. And he's quite in my confidence. You must pass over the oldbeggar's churlishness. "

I laughed an assent. And then an odd thing happened. As I spoke, I hadwalked over to a bookcase on the opposite side of the room to that onwhich my host stood. Near this bookcase hung a mirror--an oblong affair, set in brass _repoussé_ work--on the wall; and, happening to glance intoit as I approached, I caught sight of the Major's reflection as he turnedhis face to follow my movement. 

I say "turned his face"--a formal description only. What met my startledgaze was an image of some nameless horror--of features grooved, andbattered, and shapeless, as if they had been torn by a wild beast. 

I gave a little indrawn gasp and turned about. There stood the Major, plainly himself, with a pleasant smile on his face. 

"What's up?" said he. 

He spoke abstractedly, pulling at his cigar; and I answered rudely, "That's a damned bad looking-glass of yours!"

"I didn't know there was anything wrong with it, " he said, stillabstracted and apart. And, indeed, when by sheer mental effort I forcedmyself to look again, there stood my companion as he stood in the room. 

I gave a tremulous laugh, muttered something or nothing, and fell toexamining the books in the case. But my fingers shook a trifle as Iaimlessly pulled out one volume after another. 

"Am I getting fanciful?" I thought--"I whose business it is to givepractical account of every bugbear of the nerves. Bah! My liver must beout of order. A speck of bile in one's eye may look a flying dragon. "

I dismissed the folly from my mind, and set myself resolutely toinspecting the books marshalled before me. Roving amongst them, I pulledout, entirely at random, a thin, worn duodecimo, that was thrust wellback at a shelf end, as if it shrank from comparison with its prosperousand portly neighbours. Nothing but chance impelled me to the choice; andI don't know to this day what the ragged volume was about. It openednaturally at a marker that lay in it--a folded slip of paper, yellow withage; and glancing at this, a printed name caught my eye. 

With some stir of curiosity, I spread the slip out. It was a title-pageto a volume, of poems, presumably; and the author was James Shrike. 

I uttered an exclamation, and turned, book in hand. 

"An author!" I said. "You an author, Major Shrike!"

To my surprise, he snapped round upon me with something like a glare offury on his face. This the more startled me as I believed I had reason toregard him as a man whose principles of conduct had long disciplined atemper that was naturally hasty enough. 

Before I could speak to explain, he had come hurriedly across the roomand had rudely snatched the paper out of my hand. 

"How did this get--" he began; then in a moment came to himself, andapologized for his ill manners. 

"I thought every scrap of the stuff had been destroyed", he said, andtore the page into fragments. "It is an ancient effusion, doctor--perhapsthe greatest folly of my life; but it's something of a sore subject withme, and I shall be obliged if you'll not refer to it again. "

He courted my forgiveness so frankly that the matter passed withoutembarrassment; and we had our game and spent a genial evening together. But memory of the queer little scene stuck in my mind, and I could notforbear pondering it fitfully. 

Surely here was a new side-light that played upon my friend and superiora little fantastically. 

 * * * * *

Conscious of a certain vague wonder in my mind, I was traversing theprison, lost in thought, after my sociable evening with the Governor, when the fact that dim light was issuing from the open door of cellnumber 49 brought me to myself and to a pause in the corridor outside. 

Then I saw that something was wrong with the cell's inmate, and that myservices were required. 

The medium was struggling on the floor, in what looked like an epilepticfit, and Johnson and another warder were holding him from doing an injuryto himself. 

The younger man welcomed my appearance with relief. 

"Heerd him guggling, " he said, "and thought as something were up. Youcome timely, sir. "

More assistance was procured, and I ordered the prisoner's removal to theinfirmary. For a minute, before following him, I was left alone withJohnson. 

"It came to a climax, then?" I said, looking the man steadily in theface. 

"He may be subject to 'em, sir", he replied, evasively. 

I walked deliberately up to the closed door of the adjoining cell, whichwas the last on that side of the corridor. Huddled against the massiveend wall, and half imbedded in it, as it seemed, it lay in a certainshadow, and bore every sign of dust and disuse. Looking closely, I sawthat the trap in the door was not only firmly bolted, but _screwed intoits socket_. 

I turned and said to the warder quietly, --

"Is it long since this cell was in use?"

"You're very fond of asking questions", he answered doggedly. 

It was evident he would baffle me by impertinence rather than yield aconfidence. A queer insistence had seized me--a strange desire to knowmore about this mysterious chamber. But, for all my curiosity, I flushedat the man's tone. 

"You have your orders", I said sternly, "and do well to hold by them. Idoubt, nevertheless, if they include impertinence to your superiors. "

"I look straight on my duty, sir, " he said, a little abashed. "I don'twish to give offence. "

He did not, I feel sure. He followed his instinct to throw me off thescent, that was all. 

I strode off in a fume, and after attending F---- in the infirmary, wentpromptly to my own quarters. 

I was in an odd frame of mind, and for long tramped my sitting-room toand fro, too restless to go to bed, or, as an alternative, to settle downto a book. There was a welling up in my heart of some emotion that Icould neither trace nor define. It seemed neighbour to terror, neighbourto an intense fainting pity, yet was not distinctly either of these. Indeed, where was cause for one, or the subject of the other? F---- mighthave endured mental sufferings which it was only human to help to end, yet F---- was a swindling rogue, who, once relieved, merited no furtherconsideration. 

It was not on him my sentiments were wasted. Who, then, was responsiblefor them?

There is a very plain line of demarcation between the legitimate spiritof inquiry and mere apish curiosity. I could recognise it, I have nodoubt, as a rule, yet in my then mood, under the influence of a kind ofmorbid seizure, inquisitiveness took me by the throat. I could notwhistle my mind from the chase of a certain graveyard will-o'-the-wisp;and on it went stumbling and floundering through bog and mire, until itfell into a state of collapse, and was useful for nothing else. 

I went to bed and to sleep without difficulty, but I was conscious ofmyself all the time, and of a shadowless horror that seemed to comestealthily out of corners and to bend over and look at me, and to benothing but a curtain or a hanging coat when I started and stared. 

Over and over again this happened, and my temperature rose by leaps, andsuddenly I saw that if I failed to assert myself, and promptly, feverwould lap me in a consuming fire. Then in a moment I broke into a profuseperspiration, and sank exhausted into delicious unconsciousness. 

Morning found me restored to vigour, but still with the maggot ofcuriosity boring in my brain. It worked there all day, and for manysubsequent days, and at last it seemed as if my every faculty werehoneycombed with its ramifications. Then "this will not do", I thought, but still the tunnelling process went on. 

At first I would not acknowledge to myself what all this mental to-do wasabout. I was ashamed of my new development, in fact, and nervous, too, in a degree of what it might reveal in the matter of moral degeneration;but gradually, as the curious devil mastered me, I grew into such harmonywith it that I could shut my eyes no longer to the true purpose of itsinsistence. It was the _closed cell_ about which my thoughts hovered likecrows circling round carrion. 

 * * * * *

"In the dead waste and middle" of a certain night I awoke with a strange, quick recovery of consciousness. There was the passing of a singleexpiration, and I had been asleep and was awake. I had gone to bed withno sense of premonition or of resolve in a particular direction; I sat upa monomaniac. It was as if, swelling in the silent hours, the tumour ofcuriosity had come to a head, and in a moment it was necessary to operateupon it. 

I make no excuse for my then condition. I am convinced I was the victimof some undistinguishable force, that I was an agent under the control ofthe supernatural, if you like. Some thought had been in my mind of latethat in my position it was my duty to unriddle the mystery of the closedcell. This was a sop timidly held out to and rejected by my betterreason. I sought--and I knew it in my heart--solution of the puzzle, because it was a puzzle with an atmosphere that vitiated my moral fibre. Now, suddenly, I knew I must act, or, by forcing self-control, imperilmy mind's stability. 

All strung to a sort of exaltation, I rose noiselessly and dressed myselfwith rapid, nervous hands. My every faculty was focussed upon asolitary point. Without and around there was nothing but shadow anduncertainty. I seemed conscious only of a shaft of light, as it were, traversing the darkness and globing itself in a steady disc of radianceon a lonely door. 

Slipping out into the great echoing vault of the prison in stockingedfeet, I sped with no hesitation of purpose in the direction of thecorridor that was my goal. Surely some resolute Providence guided andencompassed me, for no meeting with the night patrol occurred at anypoint to embarrass or deter me. Like a ghost myself, I flitted alongthe stone flags of the passages, hardly waking a murmur from them in myprogress. 

Without, I knew, a wild and stormy wind thundered on the walls of theprison. Within, where the very atmosphere was self-contained, a cold andsolemn peace held like an irrevocable judgment. 

I found myself as if in a dream before the sealed door that had for daysharassed my waking thoughts. Dim light from a distant gas jet made apatch of yellow upon one of its panels; the rest was buttressed withshadow. 

A sense of fear and constriction was upon me as I drew softly from mypocket a screwdriver I had brought with me. It never occurred to me, Iswear, that the quest was no business of mine, and that even now I couldwithdraw from it, and no one be the wiser. But I was afraid--I wasafraid. And there was not even the negative comfort of knowing that theneighbouring cell was tenanted. It gaped like a ghostly garret nextdoor to a deserted house. 

What reason had I to be there at all, or, being there, to fear? I can nomore explain than tell how it was that I, an impartial follower of myvocation, had allowed myself to be tricked by that in the nerves I hadmade it my interest to study and combat in others. 

My hand that held the tool was cold and wet. The stiff little shriek ofthe first screw, as it turned at first uneasily in its socket, sent ajarring thrill through me. But I persevered, and it came out readilyby-and-by, as did the four or five others that held the trap secure. 

Then I paused a moment; and, I confess, the quick pant of fear seemed tocome grey from my lips. There were sounds about me--the deep breathing ofimprisoned men; and I envied the sleepers their hard-wrung repose. 

At last, in one access of determination, I put out my hand, and slidingback the bolt, hurriedly flung open the trap. An acrid whiff of dustassailed my nostrils as I stepped back a pace and stood expectant ofanything--or nothing. What did I wish, or dread, or foresee? The completeabsurdity of my behaviour was revealed to me in a moment. I could shakeoff the incubus here and now, and be a sane man again. 

I giggled, with an actual ring of self-contempt in my voice, as I made aforward movement to close the aperture. I advanced my face to it, andinhaled the sluggish air that stole forth, and--God in heaven!

I had staggered back with that cry in my throat, when I felt fingers likeiron clamps close on my arm and hold it. The grip, more than the faceI turned to look upon in my surging terror, was forcibly human. 

It was the warder Johnson who had seized me, and my heart bounded as Imet the cold fury of his eyes. 

"Prying!" he said, in a hoarse, savage whisper. "So you will, will you?And now let the devil help you!"

It was not this fellow I feared, though his white face was set like ademon's; and in the thick of my terror I made a feeble attempt to assertmy authority. 

"Let me go!" I muttered. "What! you dare?"

In his frenzy he shook my arm as a terrier shakes a rat, and, like a dog, he held on, daring me to release myself. 

For the moment an instinct half-murderous leapt in me. It sank and wasoverwhelmed in a slough of some more secret emotion. 

"Oh!" I whispered, collapsing, as it were, to the man's fury, even pitifully deprecating it. "What is it? What's there? It drewme--something unnameable". 

He gave a snapping laugh like a cough. His rage waxed second by second. There was a maniacal suggestiveness in it; and not much longer, it wasevident, could he have it under control. I saw it run and congest in hiseyes; and, on the instant of its accumulation, he tore at me with asudden wild strength, and drove me up against the very door of the secretcell. 

The action, the necessity of self-defence, restored me to some measure ofdignity and sanity. 

"Let me go, you ruffian!" I cried, struggling to free myself from hisgrasp. 

It was useless. He held me madly. There was no beating him off: and, soholding me, he managed to produce a single key from one of his pockets, and to slip it with a rusty clang into the lock of the door. 

"You dirty, prying civilian!" he panted at me, as he swayed this way andthat with the pull of my body. "You shall have your wish, by G--! Youwant to see inside, do you? Look, then!"

He dashed open the door as he spoke, and pulled me violently intothe opening. A great waft of the cold, dank air came at us, and withit--what?

The warder had jerked his dark lantern from his belt, and now--an arm ofhis still clasped about one of mine--snapped the slide open. 

"Where is it?" he muttered, directing the disc of light round and aboutthe floor of the cell. I ceased struggling. Some counter influence wasraising an odd curiosity in me. 

"Ah!" he cried, in a stifled voice, "there you are, my friend!"

He was setting the light slowly travelling along the stone flags close bythe wall over against us, and now, so guiding it, looked askance at mewith a small, greedy smile. 

"Follow the light, sir, " he whispered jeeringly. 

I looked, and saw twirling on the floor, in the patch of radiance cast bythe lamp, _a little eddy of dust_, it seemed. This eddy was never still, but went circling in that stagnant place without apparent cause orinfluence; and, as it circled, it moved slowly on by wall and corner, sothat presently in its progress it must reach us where we stood. 

Now, draughts will play queer freaks in quiet places, and of thistrifling phenomenon I should have taken little note ordinarily. But, Imust say at once, that as I gazed upon the odd moving thing my heartseemed to fall in upon itself like a drained artery. 

"Johnson!" I cried, "I must get out of this. I don't know what's thematter, or--Why do you hold me? D--n it! man, let me go; let me go, Isay!"

As I grappled with him he dropped the lantern with a crash and flung hisarms violently about me. 

"You don't!" he panted, the muscles of his bent and rigid neck seemingactually to cut into my shoulder-blade. "You don't, by G--! You cameof your own accord, and now you shall take your bellyful!"

It was a struggle for life or death, or, worse, for life and reason. ButI was young and wiry, and held my own, if I could do little more. Yetthere was something to combat beyond the mere brute strength of the man Istruggled with, for I fought in an atmosphere of horror unexplainable, and I knew that inch by inch the _thing_ on the floor was circling roundin our direction. 

Suddenly in the breathing darkness I felt it close upon us, gave onemortal yell of fear, and, with a last despairing fury, tore myself fromthe encircling arms, and sprang into the corridor without. As I plungedand leapt, the warder clutched at me, missed, caught a foot on the edgeof the door, and, as the latter whirled to with a clap, fell heavily atmy feet in a fit. Then, as I stood staring down upon him, steps soundedalong the corridor and the voices of scared men hurrying up. 

 * * * * *

Ill and shaken, and, for the time, little in love with life, yet fearingdeath as I had never dreaded it before, I spent the rest of that horriblenight huddled between my crumpled sheets, fearing to look forth, fearingto think, wild only to be far away, to be housed in some green andinnocent hamlet, where I might forget the madness and the terror inlearning to walk the unvext paths of placid souls. I had not fairlyknocked under until alone with my new dread familiar. That unction Icould lay to my heart, at least. I had done the manly part by thestricken warder, whom I had attended to his own home, in a row of littletenements that stood south of the prison walls. I had replied to allinquiries with some dignity and spirit, attributing my ruffled conditionto an assault on the part of Johnson, when he was already under theshadow of his seizure. I had directed his removal, and grudged him noprofessional attention that it was in my power to bestow. But afterwards, locked into my room, my whole nervous system broke up like a troddenant-hill, leaving me conscious of nothing but an aimless scurrying terrorand the black swarm of thoughts, so that I verily fancied my reason wouldgive under the strain. 

Yet I had more to endure and to triumph over. 

Near morning I fell into a troubled sleep, throughout which the drawntwitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen I had everspelt out of the alphabet of fear. If my body rested, my brain was anopen chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed to "sit at squat" in. 

Suddenly I woke to the fact that there was a knocking at my door--thatthere had been for some little time. 

I cried, "Come in!" finding a weak restorative in the mere sound of myown human voice; then, remembering the key was turned, bade the visitorwait until I could come to him. 

Scrambling, feeling dazed and white-livered, out of bed, I opened thedoor, and met one of the warders on the threshold. The man looked scared, and his lips, I noticed, were set in a somewhat boding fashion. 

"Can you come at once, sir?" he said. "There's summat wrong with theGovernor. "

"Wrong? What's the matter with him?"

"Why, "--he looked down, rubbed an imaginary protuberance smooth with hisfoot, and glanced up at me again with a quick, furtive expression, --"he'sgot his face set in the grating of 47, and danged if a man Jack of us canget him to move or speak. "

I turned away, feeling sick. I hurriedly pulled on coat and trousers, andhurriedly went off with my summoner. Reason was all absorbed in a wildestphantasy of apprehension. 

"Who found him?" I muttered, as we sped on. 

"Vokins see him go down the corridor about half after eight, sir, and seehim give a start like when he noticed the trap open. It's never been sobefore in my time. Johnson must ha' done it last night, before he weretook. "

"Yes, yes. "

"The man said the Governor went to shut it, it seemed, and to draw hisface to'ards the bars in so doin'. Then he see him a-lookin' through, ashe thought; but nat'rally it weren't no business of his'n, and he wentoff about his work. But when he come anigh agen, fifteen minutes later, there were the Governor in the same position; and he got scared over it, and called out to one or two of us. "

"Why didn't one of you ask the Major if anything was wrong?"

"Bless you! we did; and no answer. And we pulled him, compatible withdiscipline, but--"

"But what?"

"He's stuck. "

"Stuck!"

"See for yourself, sir. That's all I ask. "

I did, a moment later. A little group was collected about the door ofcell 47, and the members of it spoke together in whispers, as if theywere frightened men. One young fellow, with a face white in patches, asif it had been floured, slid from them as I approached, and accosted metremulously. 

"Don't go anigh, sir. There's something wrong about the place. "

I pulled myself together, forcibly beating down the excitement reawakenedby the associations of the spot. In the discomfiture of others' nerves Ifound my own restoration. 

"Don't be an ass!" I said, in a determined voice, "There's nothing herethat can't be explained. Make way for me, please!"

They parted and let me through, and I saw him. He stood, spruce, frock-coated, dapper, as he always was, with his face pressed againstand _into_ the grill, and either hand raised and clenched tightly round abar of the trap. His posture was as of one caught and strivingfrantically to release himself; yet the narrowness of the intervalbetween the rails precluded so extravagant an idea. He stood quitemotionless--taut and on the strain, as it were--and nothing of his facewas visible but the back ridges of his jaw-bones, showing white through abush of red whiskers. 

"Major Shrike!" I rapped out, and, allowing myself no hesitation, reachedforth my hand and grasped his shoulder. The body vibrated under my touch, but he neither answered nor made sign of hearing me. Then I pulled at himforcibly, and ever with increasing strength. His fingers held like steelbraces. He seemed glued to the trap, like Theseus to the rock. 

Hastily I peered round, to see if I could get glimpse of his face. Inoticed enough to send me back with a little stagger. 

"Has none of you got a key to this door?" I asked, reviewing the scaredfaces about me, than which my own was no less troubled, I feel sure. 

"Only the Governor, sir, " said the warder who had fetched me. "There'snot a man but him amongst us that ever seen this opened. "

He was wrong there, I could have told him; but held my tongue, forobvious reasons. 

"I want it opened. Will one of you feel in his pockets?"

Not a soul stirred. Even had not sense of discipline precluded, that of acertain inhuman atmosphere made fearful creatures of them all. 

"Then, " said I, "I must do it myself. "

I turned once more to the stiff-strung figure, had actually put hand onit, when an exclamation from Vokins arrested me. 

"There's a key--there, sir!" he said--"stickin' out yonder between itsfeet. "

Sure enough there was--Johnson's, no doubt, that had been shot from itssocket by the clapping to of the door, and afterwards kicked aside by thewarder in his convulsive struggles. 

I stooped, only too thankful for the respite, and drew it forth. I hadseen it but once before, yet I recognised it at a glance. 

Now, I confess, my heart felt ill as I slipped the key into the wards, and a sickness of resentment at the tyranny of Fate in making me itshelpless minister surged up in my veins. Once, with my fingers on theiron loop, I paused, and ventured a fearful side glance at the figurewhose crookt elbow almost touched my face; then, strung to the highpitch of inevitability, I shot the lock, pushed at the door, and in theact, made a back leap into the corridor. 

Scarcely, in doing so, did I look for the totter and collapse outwards ofthe rigid form. I had expected to see it fall away, face down, into thecell, as its support swung from it. Yet it was, I swear, as if somethingfrom within had relaxed its grasp and given the fearful dead man aswingeing push outwards as the door opened. 

It went on its back, with a dusty slap on the stone flags, and from allits spectators--me included--came a sudden drawn sound, like wind in akeyhole. 

What can I say, or how describe it? A dead thing it was--but the face!

Barred with livid scars where the grating rails had crossed it, the restseemed to have been worked and kneaded into a mere featureless plate ofyellow and expressionless flesh. 

And it was this I had seen in the glass!

 * * * * *

There was an interval following the experience above narrated, duringwhich a certain personality that had once been mine was effaced orsuspended, and I seemed a passive creature, innocent of the least desireof independence. It was not that I was actually ill or actually insane. Amerciful Providence set my finer wits slumbering, that was all, leavingme a sufficiency of the grosser faculties that were necessary to theright ordering of my behaviour. 

I kept to my room, it is true, and even lay a good deal in bed; but thiswas more to satisfy the busy scruples of a _locum tenens_--a practitionerof the neighbourhood, who came daily to the prison to officiate in myabsence--than to cosset a complaint that in its inactivity was purelynegative. I could review what had happened with a calmness as profoundas if I had read of it in a book. I could have wished to continue myduties, indeed, had the power of insistence remained to me. But the sanermedicus was acute where I had gone blunt, and bade me to the restfulcourse. He was right. I was mentally stunned, and had I not slept off mylethargy, I should have gone mad in an hour--leapt at a bound, probably, from inertia to flaming lunacy. 

I remembered everything, but through a fluffy atmosphere, so to speak. Itwas as if I looked on bygone pictures through ground glass that softenedthe ugly outlines. 

Sometimes I referred to these to my substitute, who was wise to answer meaccording to my mood; for the truth left me unruffled, whereas an obviousevasion of it would have distressed me. 

"Hammond, " I said one day, "I have never yet asked you. How did I give myevidence at the inquest?"

"Like a doctor and a sane man. "

"That's good. But it was a difficult course to steer. You conducted thepost-mortem. Did any peculiarity in the dead man's face strike you?"

"Nothing but this: that the excessive contraction of the bicipitalmuscles had brought the features into such forcible contact with the barsas to cause bruising and actual abrasion. He must have been dead somelittle time when you found him. "

"And nothing else? You noticed nothing else in his face--a sort ofobliteration of what makes one human, I mean?"

"Oh, dear, no! nothing but the painful constriction that marks anyordinary fatal attack of _angina pectoris_. --There's a rum breach ofpromise case in the paper to-day. You should read it; it'll make youlaugh. "

I had no more inclination to laugh than to sigh; but I accepted thechange of subject with an equanimity now habitual to me. 

 * * * * *

One morning I sat up in bed, and knew that consciousness was wide awakein me once more. It had slept, and now rose refreshed, but trembling. Looking back, all in a flutter of new responsibility, along the mistypath by way of which I had recently loitered, I shook with an awfulthankfulness at sight of the pitfalls I had skirted and escaped--ofthe demons my witlessness had baffled. 

The joy of life was in my heart again, but chastened and made pitiful byexperience. 

Hammond noticed the change in me directly he entered, and congratulatedme upon it. 

"Go slow at first, old man, " he said. "You've fairly sloughed the oldskin; but give the sun time to toughen the new one. Walk in it atpresent, and be content. "

I was, in great measure, and I followed his advice. I got leave ofabsence, and ran down for a month in the country to a certain house wewot of, where kindly ministration to my convalescence was only one of themany blisses to be put to an account of rosy days. 

"_Then did my love awake, Most like a lily-flower, And as the lovely queene of heaven, So shone shee in her bower. _"

Ah, me! ah, me! when was it? A year ago, or two-thirds of a lifetime?Alas! "Age with stealing steps hath clawde me with his crowch. " And willthe yews root in _my_ heart, I wonder?

I was well, sane, recovered, when one morning, towards the end of myvisit, I received a letter from Hammond, enclosing a packet addressed tome, and jealously sealed and fastened. My friend's communication ran asfollows:--

"There died here yesterday afternoon a warder, Johnson--he who had thatapoplectic seizure, you will remember, the night before poor Shrike'sexit. I attended him to the end, and, being alone with him an hour beforethe finish, he took the enclosed from under his pillow, and a solemn oathfrom me that I would forward it direct to you, sealed as you will findit, and permit no other soul to examine or even touch it. I acquit myselfof the charge, but, my dear fellow, with an uneasy sense of theresponsibility I incur in thus possibly suggesting to you a retrospect ofevents which you had much best consign to the limbo of the--notunexplainable, but not worth trying to explain. It was patent from whatI have gathered that you were in an overstrung and excitable condition atthat time, and that your temporary collapse was purely nervous in itscharacter. It seems there was some nonsense abroad in the prison about acertain cell, and that there were fools who thought fit to associateJohnson's attack and the other's death with the opening of that cell'sdoor. I have given the new Governor a tip, and he has stopped all that. We have examined the cell in company, and found it, as one might suppose, a very ordinary chamber. The two men died perfectly natural deaths, andthere is the last to be said on the subject. I mention it only from thefear that enclosed may contain some allusion to the rubbish, a perusal ofwhich might check the wholesome convalescence of your thoughts. If youtake my advice, you will throw the packet into the fire unread. At least, if you do examine it, postpone the duty till you feel yourself absolutelyimpervious to any mental trickery, and--bear in mind that you are aworthy member of a particularly matter-of-fact and unemotionalprofession. "

 * * * * *

I smiled at the last clause, for I was now in a condition to feel arather warm shame over my erst weak-knee'd collapse before a sheet and anilluminated turnip. I took the packet to my bedroom, shut the door, andsat myself down by the open window. The garden lay below me, and the dewymeadows beyond. In the one, bees were busy ruffling the ruddygillyflowers and April stocks; in the other, the hedge twigs were allfrosted with Mary buds, as if Spring had brushed them with the fleece ofher wings in passing. 

I fetched a sigh of content as I broke the seal of the packet and broughtout the enclosure. Somewhere in the garden a little sardonic laugh wasclipt to silence. It came from groom or maid, no doubt; yet it thrilledme with an odd feeling of uncanniness, and I shivered slightly. 

"Bah!" I said to myself determinedly. "There is a shrewd nip in the wind, for all the show of sunlight;" and I rose, pulled down the window, andresumed my seat. 

Then in the closed room, that had become deathly quiet by contrast, Iopened and read the dead man's letter. 

 * * * * *

"Sir, --I hope you will read what I here put down. I lay it on you as asolemn injunction, for I am a dying man, and I know it. And to who ismy death due, and the Governor's death, if not to you, for your pryin'and curiosity, as surely as if you had drove a nife through our harts?Therefore, I say, Read this, and take my burden from me, for it has beena burden; and now it is right that you that interfered should have it onyour own mortal shoulders. The Major is dead and I am dying, and in thefirst of my fit it went on in my head like cimbells that the trap wasleft open, and that if he passed he would look in and _it_ would get him. For he knew not fear, neither would he submit to bullying by God ordevil. 

"Now I will tell you the truth, and Heaven quit you of yourresponsibility in our destruction. 

"There wasn't another man to me like the Governor in all the countries ofthe world. Once he brought me to life after doctors had given me up fordead; but he willed it, and I lived; and ever afterwards I loved him as adog loves its master. That was in the Punjab; and I came home to Englandwith him, and was his servant when he got his appointment to the jailhere. I tell you he was a proud and fierce man, but under control andtender to those he favoured; and I will tell you also a strange thingabout him. Though he was a soldier and an officer, and strict indiscipline as made men fear and admire him, his heart at bottom was allfor books, and literature, and such-like gentle crafts. I had hisconfidence, as a man gives his confidence to his dog, and before mesometimes he unbent as he never would before others. In this way I learntthe bitter sorrow of his life. He had once hoped to be a poet, acknowledged as such before the world. He was by natur' an idelist, asthey call it, and God knows what it meant to him to come out of thewoods, so to speak, and sweat in the dust of cities; but he did it, forhis will was of tempered steel. He buried his dreams in the clouds andcame down to earth greatly resolved, but with one undying hate. It is notgood to hate as he could, and worse to be hated by such as him; and Iwill tell you the story, and what it led to. 

"It was when he was a subaltern that he made up his mind to the plunge. For years he had placed all his hopes and confidents in a book of verseshe had wrote, and added to, and improved during that time. A littleencouragement, a little word of praise, was all he looked for, and thenhe was ready to buckle to again, profitin' by advice, and do better. Heput all the love and beauty of his heart into that book, and at last, after doubt, and anguish, and much diffidents, he published it and giveit to the world. Sir, it fell what they call still-born from the press. It was like a green leaf flutterin' down in a dead wood. To a proudand hopeful man, bubblin' with music, the pain of neglect, when he cometo realize it, was terrible. But nothing was said, and there was nothingto say. In silence he had to endure and suffer. 

"But one day, during maneuvers, there came to the camp a grey-faced man, a newspaper correspondent, and young Shrike knocked up a friendshipwith him. Now how it come about I cannot tell, but so it did that thisskip-kennel wormed the lad's sorrow out of him, and his confidents, swore he'd been damnabilly used, and that when he got back he'd crack upthe book himself in his own paper. He was a fool for his pains, and aserpent in his cruelty. The notice come out as promised, and, my God! theauthor was laughed and mocked at from beginning to end. Even confidentseshe had given to the creature was twisted to his ridicule, and his veryappearance joked over. And the mess got wind of it, and made a rare storyfor the dog days. 

"He bore it like a soldier, and that he became heart and liver from themoment. But he put something to the account of the grey-faced man andlocked it up in his breast. 

"He come across him again years afterwards in India, and told him verypolitely that he hadn't forgotten him, and didn't intend to. But he wasanigh losin' sight of him there for ever and a day, for the creature tookcholera, or what looked like it, and rubbed shoulders with death and thedevil before he pulled through. And he come across him again over here, and that was the last of him, as you shall see presently. 

"Once, after I knew the Major (he were Captain then), I was a-brushin'his coat, and he stood a long while before the glass. Then he twistedupon me, with a smile on his mouth, and says he, --

"'The dog was right, Johnson: this isn't the face of a poet. I was apresumtious ass, and born to cast up figgers with a pen behind my ear. '

"'Captain, ' I says, 'if you was skinned, you'd look like any other manwithout his. The quality of a soul isn't expressed by a coat. '

"'Well, ' he answers, 'my soul's pretty clean-swept, I think, save for oneBluebeard chamber in it that's been kep' locked ever so many years. It's nice and dirty by this time, I expect, ' he says. Then the grin comeson his mouth again. 'I'll open it some day, ' he says, 'and look. There'ssomething in it about comparing me to a dancing dervish, with the wind inmy petticuts. Perhaps I'll get the chance to set somebody else dancingby-and-by. '

"He did, and took it, and the Bluebeard chamber come to be opened in thisvery jail. 

"It was when the system was lying fallow, so to speak, and the prison wasdeserted. Nobody was there but him and me and the echoes from the emptycourts. The contract for restoration hadn't been signed, and for months, and more than a year, we lay idle, nothing bein' done. 

"Near the beginnin' of this period, one day comes, for the third time ofthe Major's seein' him, the grey-faced man. 'Let bygones be bygones, 'he says. 'I was a good friend to you, though you didn't know it; and now, I expect, you're in the way to thank me. '

"'I am, ' says the Major. 

"'Of course, ' he answers. 'Where would be your fame and reputation as oneof the leadin' prison reformers of the day if you had kep' on in thatriming nonsense?'

"'Have you come for my thanks?' says the Governor. 

"'I've come, ' says the grey-faced man, 'to examine and report upon yoursystem. '

"'For your paper?'

"'Possibly; but to satisfy myself of its efficacy, in the firstinstance. '

"'You aren't commissioned, then?'

"'No; I come on my own responsibility. '

"'Without consultation with any one?'

"'Absolutely without. I haven't even a wife to advise me, ' he says, witha yellow grin. What once passed for cholera had set the bile on his skinlike paint, and he had caught a manner of coughing behind his hand like atoast-master. 

"'I know, ' says the Major, looking him steady in the face, 'that what yousay about me and my affairs is sure to be actuated by conscientiousmotives. '

"'Ah, ' he answers. 'You're sore about that review still, I see. '

"'Not at all, ' says the Major; 'and, in proof, I invite you to be myguest for the night, and to-morrow I'll show you over the prison andexplain my system. '

"The creature cried, 'Done!' and they set to and discussed jail mattersin great earnestness. I couldn't guess the Governor's intentions, but, somehow, his manner troubled me. And yet I can remember only one point ofhis talk. He were always dead against making public show of hisbirds. 'They're there for reformation, not ignimony, ' he'd say. Prisonsin the old days were often, with the asylum and the work'us, made theholiday show-places of towns. I've heard of one Justice of the Peace, upNorth, who, to save himself trouble, used to sign a lot of blank ordersfor leave to view, so that applicants needn't bother him when they wantedto go over. They've changed all that, and the Governor were instrumentalin the change. 

"'It's against my rule, ' he said that night, 'to exhibit to a strangerwithout a Government permit; but, seein' the place is empty, and for oldremembrance' sake, I'll make an exception in your favour, and you shalllearn all I can show you of the inside of a prison. '

"Now this was natural enough; but I was uneasy. 

"He treated his guest royally; so much that when we assembled the nextmornin' for the inspection, the grey-faced man were shaky as a wet dog. But the Major were all set prim and dry, like the soldier he was. 

"We went straight away down corridor B, and at cell 47 we stopped. 

"'We will begin our inspection here, ' said the Governor. 'Johnson, openthe door. '

"I had the keys of the row; fitted in the right one, and pushed open thedoor. 

"'After you, sir, ' said the Major; and the creature walked in, and heshut the door on him. 

"I think he smelt a rat at once, for he began beating on the wood andcalling out to us. But the Major only turned round to me with his facelike a stone. 

"'Take that key from the bunch, ' he said, 'and give it to me. '

"I obeyed, all in a tremble, and he took and put it in his pocket. 

"'My God, Major!' I whispered, 'what are you going to do with him?'

"'Silence, sir!' he said. 'How dare you question your superior officer!'

"And the noise inside grew louder. 

"The Governor, he listened to it a moment like music; then he unboltedand flung open the trap, and the creature's face came at it like a wildbeast's. 

"'Sir, ' said the Major to it, 'you can't better understand my system thanby experiencing it. What an article for your paper you could writealready--almost as pungint a one as that in which you ruined the hopesand prospects of a young cockney poet. '

"The man mouthed at the bars. He was half-mad, I think, in that oneminute. 

"'Let me out!' he screamed. 'This is a hideous joke! Let me out!'

"'When you are quite quiet--deathly quiet, ' said the Major, 'you shallcome out. Not before;' and he shut the trap in its face very softly. 

"'Come, Johnson, march!' he said, and took the lead, and we walked out ofthe prison. 

"I was like to faint, but I dared not disobey, and the man's screechingfollowed us all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut thefirst great door on it. 

"It may have gone on for hours, alone in that awful emptiness. Thecreature was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart. 

"And from that hour till his death, five months later, he rotted andmaddened in his dreadful tomb. "

 * * * * *

There was more, but I pushed the ghastly confession from me at this pointin uncontrollable loathing and terror. Was it possible--possible, thatinjured vanity could so falsify its victim's every tradition of decency?

"Oh!" I muttered, "what a disease is ambition! Who takes one step towardsit puts his foot on Alsirat!"

It was minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption of thetask; but at last I took it up again, with a groan. 

 * * * * *

"I don't think at first I realized the full mischief the Governorintended to do. At least, I hoped he only meant to give the man a goodfright and then let him go. I might have known better. How could he everrelease him without ruining himself?

"The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There was a strangenew look of triumph in his face, and in his hand he held a heavyhunting-crop. I pray to God he acted in madness, but my duty andobedience was to him. 

"'There is sport toward, Johnson, ' he said. 'My dervish has got todance. '

"I followed him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door, but theplace was silent as the grave. But from the cell, when we reached it, came a low, whispering sound. 

"The Governor slipped the trap and looked through. 

"'All right, ' he said, and put the key in the door and flung it open. 

"He were sittin' crouched on the ground, and he looked up at usvacant-like. His face were all fallen down, as it were, and his mouthnever ceased to shake and whisper. 

"The Major shut the door and posted me in a corner. Then he moved to thecreature with his whip. 

"'Up!' he cried. 'Up, you dervish, and dance to us!' and he brought thethong with a smack across his shoulders. 

"The creature leapt under the blow, and then to his feet with a cry, andthe Major whipped him till he danced. All round the cell he drove him, lashing and cutting--and again, and many times again, until the poorthing rolled on the floor whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give anaccount of this some day. I shall have to whip my master with a red-hotserpent round the blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it withagony, because here my love and my obedience was to him. 

"When it was finished, he bade me put down food and drink that I hadbrought with me, and come away with him; and we went, leaving himrolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him alone in the empty prisonuntil we should come again at the same time to-morrow. 

"So day by day this went on, and the dancing three or four times a week, until at last the whip could be left behind, for the man would scream andbegin to dance at the mere turning of the key in the lock. And he dancedfor four months, but not the fifth. 

"Nobody official came near us all this time. The prison stood lonely as adeserted ruin where dark things have been done. 

"Once, with fear and trembling, I asked my master how he would accountfor the inmate of 47 if he was suddenly called upon by authority toopen the cell; and he answered, smiling, --

"I should say it was my mad brother. By his own account, he showed me abrother's love, you know. It would be thought a liberty; but theauthorities, I think, would stretch a point for me. But if I gotsufficient notice, I should clear out the cell. '

"I asked him how, with my eyes rather than my lips, and he answered meonly with a look. 

"And all this time he was, outside the prison, living the life of a goodman--helping the needy, ministering to the poor. He even entertainedoccasionally, and had more than one noisy party in his house. 

"But the fifth month the creature danced no more. He was a dumb, silentanimal then, with matted hair and beard; and when one entered he wouldonly look up at one pitifully, as if he said, 'My long punishment isnearly ended'. How it came that no inquiry was ever made about him Iknow not, but none ever was. Perhaps he was one of the wandering gentrythat nobody ever knows where they are next. He was unmarried, and hadapparently not told of his intended journey to a soul. 

"And at the last he died in the night. We found him lying stiff andstark in the morning, and scratched with a piece of black crust on astone of the wall these strange words: 'An Eddy on the Floor'. Justthat--nothing else. 

"Then the Governor came and looked down, and was silent. Suddenly hecaught me by the shoulder. 

"'Johnson', he cried, 'if it was to do again, I would do it! I repent ofnothing. But he has paid the penalty, and we call quits. May he restin peace!'

"'Amen!' I answered low. Yet I knew our turn must come for this. 

"We buried him in quicklime under the wall where the murderers lie, and Imade the cell trim and rubbed out the writing, and the Governor lockedall up and took away the key. But he locked in more than he bargainedfor. 

"For months the place was left to itself, and neither of us went anigh47. Then one day the workmen was to be put in, and the Major he tookme round with him for a last examination of the place before they come. 

"He hesitated a bit outside a particular cell; but at last he drove inthe key and kicked open the door. 

"'My God!' he says, 'he's dancing still!'

"My heart was thumpin', I tell you, as I looked over his shoulder. Whatdid we see? What you well understand, sir; but, for all it was no morethan that, we knew as well as if it was shouted in our ears that it washim, dancin'. It went round by the walls and drew towards us, and as itstole near I screamed out, 'An Eddy on the Floor!' and seized and draggedthe Major out and clapped to the door behind us. 

"'Oh!' I said, 'in another moment it would have had us'. 

"He looked at me gloomily. 

"'Johnson', he said, 'I'm not to be frighted or coerced. He may dance, but he shall dance alone. Get a screwdriver and some screws and fasten upthis trap. No one from this time looks into this cell. '

"I did as he bid me, sweatin'; and I swear all the time I wrought Idreaded a hand would come through the trap and clutch mine. 

"On one pretex' or another, from that day till the night you meddled withit, he kep' that cell as close shut as a tomb. And he went his ways, discardin' the past from that time forth. Now and again a over-sensitiveprisoner in the next cell would complain of feelin' uncomfortable. Ifpossible, he would be removed to another; if not, he was damd for hisfancies. And so it might be goin' on to now, if you hadn't pried andinterfered. I don't blame you at this moment, sir. Likely you were aninstrument in the hands of Providence; only, as the instrument, you mustnow take the burden of the truth on your own shoulders. I am a dying man, but I cannot die till I have confessed. Per'aps you may find it in yourhart some day to give up a prayer for me--but it must be for the Major aswell. 

"Your obedient servant, "J. JOHNSON. "

 * * * * *

What comment of my own can I append to this wild narrative?Professionally, and apart from personal experiences, I should rule it thecomposition of an epileptic. That a noted journalist, nameless as he wasand is to me, however nomadic in habit, could disappear from human ken, and his fellows rest content to leave him unaccounted for, seems a taxupon credulity so stupendous that I cannot seriously endorse thestatement. 

Yet, also--there _is_ that little matter of my personal experience. 

DINAH'S MAMMOTH

On a day early in the summer of the present year Miss Dinah Groom wasfound lying dead off a field-path of the little obscure Wiltshire villagewhich she had named her "rest and be thankful. " At the date of herdecease she was not an old woman, though any one marking her white hairand much-furrowed features might have supposed her one. The hair, however, was ample in quantity, the wrinkles rather so many under-scoresof energy than evidences of senility; and until the blinds were down overher soul, she had looked into and across the world with a pair of eyesthat seemed to reflect the very blue and white of a June sky. No doubtshe had thought to breast the hills and sail the seas again in somerenaissance of vigour. No doubt her "retreat, " like a Roman Catholic's, was designed to be merely temporary. She aped the hermit for the sake ofa sojourn in the hermitage. She came to her island of Avalon to berestored of her weary limbs and her blistered feet, so to speak; andthere her heart, too weak for her spirit, failed her, and she fellamongst the young budding poppies, and died. 

I use the word "heart" literally, and in no sentimental sense. To talk ofassociations of sentiment in connection with this lady would bemisleading. She herself would not have repudiated any responsibility forthe term as applied to her; she would have simply failed to understandthe term itself. There was no least affectation in this. Throughout herlife of sixty years, as I gather, she acted never once upon principle. Impulse and inclination dominated her, and she would indulge manyprimitive instincts without a thought of conventions. Yet she was notselfish; or, at least, only in the self-contained and self-protectivemeaning of the word. She was a perfect animal, conscious of her supremebrute caste, shrewd, resourceful, and the plain embodiment of truth. 

Miss Groom had, I think, a boundless feeling of fellowship with beauty ofwhatever description; but no least touch of that sorrow of affectionwhich, in its very humanity, is divine. Her unswerving creed was thatwoman was the inheritrix of the earth, the reversion of which she hadwilfully mortgaged to an alien race, and that she had bartered hermaterial immortality for a sensation. For man she had no vulgar andjealous contempt; but she feared and shrank from him as something movedby scruples with which she had no sympathy. She understood the world ofNature, and could respond to its bloodless caresses and passions. Shecould _not_ understand the moodiness that dwells upon a grievance, orthat would sell its birthright of joy for a pitiful memory. 

Yet (and here I must speak with discretion, for I have no sufficient datato go upon) there was that of contradictoriness in her character that, Ihave reason to believe, she had borne children, and had even been rightand particular as to their temporal welfare until such time as, in thenature of things, they were of an age to make shift for themselves. This, virtually, I know to be the case; and that, once quit of the primitivematernal responsibility, she gave no more thought to them than a thrushgives to its fledglings when she has educated them to their firstflights, and to the useful knack of cracking a snail on a stone. 

My own feeling about Dinah Groom was that she had "thrown back" a longway over the heads of heredity, and that, in her fearlessness, in herundegenerate physique, in the animal regularity of her face and form, shepresented to modern days a startling aboriginal type. 

Beautiful--save in the sense of symmetry--she can never have been to theordinary man; inasmuch as she would subscribe to no arbitrary standard ofhis dictating. She had a high, rich colour; but her complexion mustalways have been rough, and a pronounced little moustache crossed herupper lip, like an accent to the speech that was too distinct anduncompromising to be melodious. Her every limb and feature, however, wasinstinct with capability, and, in her presence, one must always be movedto marvel over that indescribable worship of disproportion that has grownto be the religion of a shapely race. 

 * * * * *

How I first became acquainted with Miss Groom it is unnecessary toexplain. During the last three years of her life I was fortunate to beher guest in the Wiltshire retreat for an aggregate of many months. Shetook a fancy to me--to my solitariness and moroseness, perhaps--and shenot only liked to have me with her, but, after a time, she fell intosomething of a habit of recalling for my benefit certain passages andexperiences of her past life. In doing this, there was no suggestion ofconfidence; and I am breaking no faith in alluding to them. She was afine talker--rugged, unpicturesque, but with an instinctive capacity ofselection in words. If I quote her, as I wish to do, I cannot reproduceher style; and that, no doubt, would appear bald on paper. But, at least, the matter is all her own. 

Now, I must premise that I arrogate to myself no exhibitory rights inthis lady. She was familiar with and to many from the foremost ranks ofthose who "follow knowledge like a sinking star"; those great andrestless spirits to whom inaction reads stagnation. To such, in allprobability, I tell, in speaking of Dinah Groom, a twice-told tale; and, therefore--inasmuch as I make it my business only to print what ishitherto unrecorded--to them I give the assurance that I do not claim tohave "discovered" their friend. 

 * * * * *

On a wall of the little embowered sitting-room hung a queer picture, byErnest Griset, of the "Overwhelming of the Mammoths in the Ice. " From thefirst this odd conception had engaged my curiosity, --purely for itsfanciful side, --and one evening, in alluding to it, I made the not veryprofound remark that Imagination had no anatomy. 

"They are true beasts, " said Dinah. 

"They are the mastodons of Cuvier, no doubt; but, then, Cuvier never sawa mastodon, you know. "

"But I have; and I tell you Griset and Cuvier are very nearly right. "

I expressed no surprise. 

"In what were they astray?" I asked. 

"The mammoth, as I saw it, had a huge hump--like the steam-chest of anenormous engine--over its shoulders. "

"And where did you see it, and when?"

"You are curious to know?"

"Yes, I think I am; and there is a quiet of expectancy abroad. I hear theghost of my dead brother walking in the corridor, Dinah; and we are allwaiting for you to speak. "

She smiled, and said, "Push me over the cigarettes. "

She struck a match, kindled the little crackling tube, and threw thelight out into the shrubbery. It traced a tiny arc of flame and vanished. The sky was full of the mewing of lost kittens, it seemed. The sound camefrom innumerable peewits, that fled and circled above the slopes of thedarkening meadows below. 

"What an uncomfortable seer you are!" she said, "to people this dearhuman night with your fancies. No doubt, now, you will read betweenthe lines of that bird speech down there?" (She looked at me curiously, but with none of the mournful speculativeness of a soul strugglingagainst the dimness of its own vision. ) "To me it is articulatehappiness--nothing more abstruse. Yes, I have seen a mastodon; and I wasas glad to happen on the beast as a naturalist is glad to find a missinglink in a chain of evidence. From the moment, I knew myself quite clearlyto be the recovered heir to this abused planet. "

She paused a moment, and contracted her brows, as if regretfully and inanger. "If I had only seen it sooner!" she cried, low; "before I had, inmy pride of strength, tested the poison that has bewildered the brains ofmy sisters!"

Her general reserve was her self-armour against the bolts of thePhilistines. What worldling would not have read mania in much that wasspoken by this sane woman? Yet, indeed, if we were all to find the powerto give expression to our inmost thoughts, madness and sanity would haveto change places in the order of affairs. 

"Once, " said Dinah--"and it was when I was a young woman--a man in whom Iwas interested shipped as passenger on a whaling vessel. This friend waswhat is called a degenerate. Physically and morally he had yielded hisclaim to any share in that province of the sun, that his race hadconquered and annexed only to find it antipathetic to its needs. Combative effort was grown impossible to him, as in time it will grow toyou all. You drop from the world like dead flies from a wall. He couldnot physic his soul with woods, and groves, and waters. To hisperceptions, life was become an abnormality--a disease of which hesickened, as you all must when the last of the fever of aggression hasbeen diluted out of your veins. You die of your triumph, as the bee diesof his own weapon of offence; and you can find no antidote to the poisonin the nature you have inoculated with your own virus. 

"This man contemplated self-destruction as the only escape. He had soughtdistraction of his moral torments in travel long and varied. Many of themost beautiful, of the historically interesting places of the world, hehad visited and sojourned in--without avail. His haunting feeling, hesaid, was that he did not belong to himself. Pursued by this Nemesis, hecame home to end it all. He still proclaimed his spiritual independence;but it was immeshed, and he must tear the strands. This was wonderfullyperplexing to me, and, out of my curiosity, I must persuade him to makeone more attempt. His late efforts, I assured him, were nothing but anendeavour to cure nausea with sweet syrups. He would not get his changeout of nature by such pitiful wooing. Let him, rather, emulate, if hecould not feel, the spirit of his remote forbears, and rally his nervesto an expedition into the harsh and awful places of the earth. I wouldaccompany him, and watch with and for him, and supply that of the fibrehe lacked. 

"He consented, and, after some difficulty (for there is an economy ofroom in whalers), we obtained passage in a vessel and sailed into theunknown. Our life and our food were simple and rugged; but the keen air, the relief from luxury, the novelty and the wonder, wrought upon mycompanion and renewed him, so that presently I was amused to note in himsigns of a moral preening--some smug resumption of that arrogant air ofsuperiority that is a tradition with your race. "

Miss Groom here puckered her lips, and breathed a little destructivelaugh upon her cigarette ash. 

"It did not last long, " she said. "We encountered very bad weather, andhis nerves again went by the board. That was in the 60th longitude, Ithink (where whales were still to be found in those years), and sevenhundred miles or so to the east of Spitzbergen. On the day--it was inAugust--that the storm first overtook us, the boats were out in pursuitof a 'right' whale, as, I believe, the men called it--a great bullcreature, and piebald like a horse; and I saw the spouting of his breathas if a water main had burst in a London fog. The wind came in a suddencharge from the northwest, and the whale dived with a harpoon in itsback; and in the confusion a reel fouled, and one of the boats was whiptunder in a moment--half a mile down, perhaps--and its crew drawn withit, and their lungs, full of air, burst like bubbles. We had no time tothink of them. We got the other boat-load on board, and then the galesent us crashing down the slopes of the sea. I have no knowledge of howlong we were curst of the tempest and the sport of its ravings. I onlyknow that when it released us at last, we had been hurled a thousandmiles eastwards. The long interval was all a hellish jangle in which timeseemed obliterated. Sometimes we saw the sun--a furious red globe; and weseemed to stand still while it raced down the sky and ricocheted over thefurthermost waves like a red-hot cannon ball. Sometimes in pitch darknessthe wild sense of flight and expectation was an ecstasy. But through allmy friend lay in a half-delirious stupor. 

"At length a morning broke, full of icy scud, but the sea panting andexhausted of its rage. As a child catches its breath after a storm oftears, so it would heave up suddenly, and vibrate, and sink; and werocked upon it, a ruined hulk. We were off a flat, vacant shore--if shoreyou could call it--whose margin, for miles inland, it seemed, undulatedwith the lifting of the swell. It was treeless desolation manifest; andon our sea side, as far as the eye could reach, the water bobbed andwinked with countless spars of ice. 

"I will tell you at once, my friend, --we were brought to opposite aninhuman swamp on the coast of Siberia, fifty miles or more to the westof North-east Cape; and there what remained of the crew made shift tocast anchor; and for a day and night the ragged ship curtsied to theland, like a blind beggar to an empty street, and we only dozed in ourcorners and wondered at the silence. 

"By-and-by the men made a raft, and that took us all ashore. There wassomething like a definite coast-line, then; but for long before wetouched it the undersides of the planks were scraping and hissing overvegetation. This was the winter fur of the land--thick, coarse tundramoss; and on that we pitched a camp, and on that we remained for longweeks while the ship was mending. It was a weird, lonely time. Onceor twice strange, wandering creatures came our way--little, belted men, with hairless faces, who rode up on strong horses, and liked to exhibittheir skilful management of them. They talked to us in their chirpyjargon (Toongus, I think it was called); but jargon it must needs remainto us. 

"Well, we made a patch of the hulk, and we shipped in her again. We werefortunate to be able to do that, for, with every stiffish wind blowinginshore, we had feared she would drag her moorings and ground immovablyon the swamps. The land, indeed, was so flat and low that, whenever thesea rose at all, it threshed the very plains and crackled in the moss;and we were glad, despite the risk, to leave so lifeless a place. "

Dinah paused to light another cigarette, and to inhale the ecstasy of thefirst puff or so before she continued. Up through the still evening, froma curve of the main road that crooked an elbow to her front garden, camewhat sounded like the purring of a great cat--the wind in the telegraphwires. 

"And I am now to tell you, " she said, "about the mastodon?"

"As you please, " I answered. 

"I do please; for why should I keep it to myself? It makes no difference;only I warn you, if you quote me, you will be writ down a fool or amaniac. This relation lacks witnesses, for the whaler--that Isubsequently quitted for another homing vessel--was never heard of inport any more. "

She looked at me with some serious scrutiny before she went on. 

"For these regions, it had been an extraordinarily hotsummer--phenomenally hot, I understand; and to this--to the melting andbreaking away of the ice from hitherto century-locked fastnesses, thecaptain attributed the wonderful experience that befell us. The sea wasstrewn with blocks and bergs, all hurrying onwards in the strongcurrents, as if in haste to escape the pursuing demon of frost thatshould re-fetter them; and their multitude kept the steersman's armsspinning till the man would fall half-fainting over the spoke-handles. 

"Now, one morning early in September, a dense bright fog dropped suddenlyupon the waters. We were making what sail we could--with our crippledspars and stunted trees of masts--and this it were useless to shorten, and so invite a rearward bombardment from the chasing hummocks. So wekept our course by the compass, and trailed on through a blind mist whilefear drummed in our throats. The demoralization of my friend was by thistime complete. For myself, I seldom had a thought but that Nature wouldsheathe her claws when she played with me. 

"'This cannot last long!' said the captain. 

"The words were on his lips when we struck with a noise like thesplintering of glass. We were all thrown down, and my companion screamedlike a mad thing. The captain rose and ran to the bows; and in a momenthe came back and his beard was shaking. 

"'God save us!' he cried, 'and fetch aft the rum!'

"There you have man in his invincible moods. They drank till they were ina condition to face death; and then they found that our situation wasrather improved than otherwise by the collision. For--so it appeared--wehad run full tilt for a perpendicular fissure in a huge block, andinto that our bows were firmly wedged, the nature of the impactdistributing the shock, and the berg itself carrying us along with it andprotecting us. 

"Now the dipping motion of the vessel was exchanged for a heavy regularwash along its stern quarters; for the bows were so much raised as that Ifelt a little strain on my knees as I went forward to satisfy mycuriosity with a view of the icy mass into which we were penetrated. Iwaited, indeed, until the crew were come aft again from looking, and myfriend crept timidly at my shoulder; but when we reached the stem, therewas one of the hands, a little soberer than his fellows, sprawled overthe bulwarks, and staring with all his eyes into the green lift of thewall against him. 

"'Is it a mermaid you see, Killigrew?' I asked. 

"The man shifted his gaze to me slowly and solemnly. 

"'Nowt, nowt, ' said he; 'but a turble monster, like a pram stuck injelly. '

"I laughed, and went to his side. The fog, as I have said, was dense andbright, and one could see into it a little way, as into a milky whiteagate. But now and again a film of it would pull thin, and then sunlightcame through and made a dim radiance of the ice. 

"'I can make out nothing, ' I said. 

"He cocked an eye and leered up at me. 'Look steady and sober, ' he said, 'and you'll make en owut like as in a glass darkly. '

"I gave a little gasp and my friend a cry before the words were issuedfrom the man's mouth. Drawn by some current of air, the fog at themoment blew out of the cleft, like smoke from a chimney; and there, before our gaze, was a great curved tusk coming up through the ice andinside it. 

"Now I clapped my hands in an agony, lest the fog should close in again, and the vision fade before my eyes; for, following the sweep of the tusk, I was aware of the phantom presentment of some monster creature lyingimbedded within the ice, its mighty carcase prostrate as it had fallen;the conformation of its enormous forehead presented directly to ourgaze. Its little toffee-ball eyes--little proportionately, that is tosay--squinted at us, it seemed, through half-closed lids, and a huge, hairy trunk lay curled, like the proboscis of a dead moth, between itstree-like fore-legs. Away beyond, the great red-brown drum of its hidebellied upward on ribs as thick as a Dutch galliot's, and sprouting fromits shoulders was the hump I have mentioned, but here, from its position, sprawled abroad and lying over in a shapeless mass. 

"There was something else--horribly nauseating but for its strangeness. The brute had been partly disembowelled, as there was ample evidence toshow, for the ice had preserved all. 

"Suddenly my companion gave a high nervous shriek. 

"'Look!' he cried--'the hand! the hand sticking out of the side!'

"I saw in a moment; turned, and called excitedly to the captain. He--allthe crew--came tumbling forward up the slippery deck. I seized him by theshoulder. 

"'Do you see?' I screamed--'the human hand beckoning to us from thatgreat body!'

"He gazed stupidly, swaying where he stood. 

"'One o' them bloomin' pre-hadymite cows!' he muttered; 'caught in thecold nip, by thunder! and some unfortnit crept into her for warmth. '

"I believed the creature's rude intuition had flown true. 

"'Cannot you get at it?' I gasped. 

"He stared at me. All in an instant a little paltry demon of avariceblinked out of his eye-holes. 

"'Why, ' he said slowly, 'who knows but it mayn't be a gal a-jingling fromtop to toe with gold curtain rings!'

"He was a furious dare-devil immediately, and quick, and savage, andperemptory. His spirit entered into his men. They went over the sidewith pikes and axes, and, scrambling for any foothold, set to work on theice like maniacs. In the lust of cupidity they did not even think howthey wrought against their own safety and that of the ship. 

"The point of the uppermost tusk came to within a foot of theice-surface. This they soon reached, and, prising frantically withcrowbars, flaked off and rolled away half-ton blocks of thesuperincumbent mass. I need not detail the fierce process. In half anhour they had laid bare a great segment of that part of the trunk whencethe hand protruded, and then they paused, and at a word flung down theirtools. 

"I was leaning over the bulwarks watching them. I could contain myexcitement no longer. 

"'Come, ' I said to my friend, 'help me down, for I must go. '

"He climbed over, trembling, and assisted me to a standing on the ice. Wescrambled along the track of _débris_ left by the crew. At the momenthalf a dozen of the latter were rolling back a broad flap of the hide, inwhich they had found a long L-shaped rent revealed. Then a hoarse crybroke from them, and I stumbled forward and looked down, and saw. 

"They lay beneath the mighty ribs as in a cage, of which the intercostalspaces were a foot in width, and the bars of a strength to maintain theenormous pressure of that which had surrounded and entombed them; theylay in one close group, their naked limbs smeared with the stain of theirprison--a man, a woman, and a tiny child. From their faces, and theirunfallen flesh, they might have been sleeping; but they were not; theywere come down to us, a transfixture of death--prehistoric people in aprehistoric brute, and their eyes--their eyes!"

Dinah's voice trailed off into silence. Some expression that I could notinterpret was on her face. There was regret in it, but nothing of pathosor mysticism. Suddenly she breathed out a great sigh and resumed hernarrative. 

"You will want to know how they looked, these lifeless survivors of aremote race from a remote time? I will try to tell you. The men hackedaway the ribs with their axes, and laid bare the group lying in thehollow scooped out of the fallen beast. They were little people, and theman, according to your modern canons of taste, was by far the mostbeautiful of the three. He sat erect, with one uplifted arm projectedthrough the ribs; as if, surprised by the frost-stroke, he had started toescape, and had been petrified in the act. His face, wondering anddelicate as a baby's, was hairless; and his head only a pretty infantiledown covered--a curling floss as radiant as spun glass. His wide-openeyes glinted yet with a hyacinth blue, and it was difficult to realizethat they were dead and vacant. 

"The woman was of coarser mould, ruddy, vigorous, brown-haired and eyed. She looked the very hamadryad of some blossoming tree, a sweet capriciousdaughter of the blameless earth. Everything luxuriated in her--colour, hair, and lusty flesh; and the child she held to her bosom with a mannerthat indescribably commingled contempt, and resentment, and a passion ofproprietorship. 

"This baby--joining the prominent characteristics of the two--was theoddest little mortal I have ever seen. What did its expression convey tome? 'I am fairly caught, and must brazen out the situation!' There! thatwas what it was; I cannot put it more lucidly. Only the thing's wee facewas animal conscious for the first time of itself, and inclined torejoice in that primitive energy of knowledge. 

"Now, my friend, I must tell you how the sight operated upon me and uponmy companion. For myself, I can only say that, looking upon that fine, independent fore-mother of my race, I felt the sun in my veins and thewiny fragrance of antique woods and pastures. I laughed; I clapped myhands; I danced on the ice-rubbish, so that they thought me mad. But, forthe other--the man--he was in a different plight. He was transfigured;his nervousness was gone in a flash. He cast himself down upon his knees, and gazed and gazed, his hands clasped, upon that sleek, mild progenitorof his, that pure image of gentle self-containment, whose very meeknesssuggested an indomitable will. 

"Suddenly he, my friend, cried out: 'This is one caught in the process ofmaterialization! It is not flesh; my God, no!'

"It seemed, indeed, as if it were as he said. I stopped in my caperingand looked down. The tarry hinds standing by grinned and jeered. 

"On the instant there came a splintering snap, and the floe rocked andcurtsied. 

"'Back!' yelled the captain. 'She's breaking through by the head!'

"He shrieked of the ship. She was clearing herself, had already shakenher prow free of the ice. 

"There was a wild scamper for safety. I was carried with the throng. Itwas not until I was hauled on board once more that I thought of myfriend. He still knelt where we had fled from him, a wrapt, strangeexpression on his face. 

"'Come back!' I screamed. 'You will be lost!'

"Now at that he turned his head and looked at me; but he never moved, andhis voice came to me quiet and exultant. 

"'Lost!' he said, 'ay, for forty-three years: and here, here I findmyself!'

"We dipped, and the wash of the water came about our bows. The block ofice swerved, made a sluggish half-pirouette and dropped astern. 

"'Come!' I shrieked again faintly. 

"With the echo of my cry he was a phantom, a blot, had vanished in therearward fog; and thereout a little joyous laugh came to me. 

"And that was a queer good-bye for ever, wasn't it?"

THE BLACK REAPER

PROEM

Heaven's Nursery

"Sinner, sinner, whence do you come?" "From the bitter earth they called my home. "

"Sinner, sinner, why do you wait?" "I fear to knock at the golden gate:

"My crimes were heavy; my doom is sure, And I dread the anguish I must endure. "

"Had you ever a child down there?" "One--but it died, and I learnt despair. "

"Here you will find it, behind the gate. " "God forbid! for it felt my hate--

"Shrunk in the frost of my cruelties. More than the Judge's I fear its eyes. "

"Hist! At the keyhole place your ear. Sinner, what is the sound you hear?

"Is it ten thousand babes at play? Heaven's nursery lies that way. 

"Through it to judgment all must fare It was God's pity placed it there. "

The gate swung open; the sinner past; Little hands caught and held him fast. 

"While you wait the call of the Nameless One, There's time for a game at 'Touch-and-Run'!"

He played with them there in that shining place, With the hot tears scorching his furrowed face--

Played, till the voice rang dread and clear: "Where is the sinner? I wait him here!"

Then shouting with laughter one and all They pushed him on to the Judgment Hall;

Stood by him; swarmed to the daïs steps, A jumble of gleeful eyes and lips. 

The Judge leaned stern from His Judgment Throne: _"I gave thee--where is thy littte one?"_

Wildly the culprit caught his breath: "Lord, I have sinned. My doom be death. "

He hung his head with a broken sob. There sprang a child from the rosy mob--

"Daddy!" it cried, with a joyful shriek; Leapt to his arms and kissed his cheek. 

But he put it from him with bursting sighs, And looked on the Judge with swimming eyes;

Stood abashed in his bitter shame, Waiting the sentence that never came. 

From the Throne spoke out the thundered Word: _"This be thy doom!"_ No more he heard, For a chime of laughter from baby throats Took up those crashing organ notes, Mixed with; silenced them; made them void-- And the children's laughter was unalloyed, "This be thy doom, " came a little squeak, "To play with us here at 'hide-and-seek'!"

Thrice did the Judge essay to frown; Thrice did the children laugh Him down--

Till at the last, He caught and kissed The maddest of all and the merriest;

Turned to the sinner, with smiling face: "These render futile the Judgment Place. 

"Sunniest rascals, imp and elf, Who think they can better the Judge Himself. 

"Sinner--whatever thy sins may be, Theirs is the sentence--go from Me!"

THE BLACK REAPER

TAKEN FROM THE Q---- REGISTER OF LOCAL EVENTS, AS COMPILED FROM AUTHENTICNARRATIVES

I

Now I am to tell you of a thing that befell in the year 1665 of the GreatPlague, when the hearts of certain amongst men, grown callous inwickedness upon that rebound from an inhuman austerity, were opened tothe vision of a terror that moved and spoke not in the silent places ofthe fields. Forasmuch as, however, in the recovery from delirium apatient may marvel over the incredulity of neighbours who refuse to givecredence to the presentments that have been _ipso facto_ to him, so, thenation being sound again, and its constitution hale, I expect little buta laugh for my piety in relating of the following incident; which, nevertheless, is as essential true as that he who shall look through theknot-hole in the plank of a coffin shall acquire the evil eye. 

For, indeed, in those days of a wild fear and confusion, when everycondition that maketh for reason was set wandering by a devious path, andall men sitting as in a theatre of death looked to see the curtain riseupon God knows what horrors, it was vouchsafed to many to witness sightsand sounds beyond the compass of Nature, and that as if the devil and hisminions had profited by the anarchy to slip unobserved into the world. And I know that this is so, for all the insolence of a recoveredscepticism; and, as to the unseen, we are like one that traverseth thedark with a lanthorn, himself the skipper of a little moving blot oflight, but a positive mark for any secret foe without the circumferenceof its radiance. 

Be that as it may, and whether it was our particular ill-fortune, or, assome asserted, our particular wickedness, that made of our village aninviting back-door of entrance to the Prince of Darkness, I know not; butso it is that disease and contagion are ever inclined to penetrate by wayof flaws or humours where the veil of the flesh is already perforated, as a kite circleth round its quarry, looking for the weak place tostrike: and, without doubt, in that land of corruption we were a veryfoul blot indeed. 

How this came about it were idle to speculate; yet no man shall have thehardihood to affirm that it was otherwise. Nor do I seek to extenuatemyself, who was in truth no better than my neighbours in most that madeus a community of drunkards and forswearers both lewd and abominable. For in that village a depravity that was like madness had come to possessthe heads of the people, and no man durst take his stand on honesty oreven common decency, for fear he should be set upon by his comrades anddrummed out of his government on a pint pot. Yet for myself I will saywas one only redeeming quality, and that was the pure love I bore to mysolitary orphaned child, the little Margery. 

Now, our Vicar--a patient and God-fearing man, for all his predial titheswere impropriated by his lord, that was an absentee and a sheriff inLondon--did little to stem that current of lewdness that had set instrong with the Restoration. And this was from no lack of virtue inhimself, but rather from a natural invertebracy, as one may say, and anorder of mind that, yet being no order, is made the sport of anysophister with a wit for paragram. Thus it always is that mere example isof little avail without precept, --of which, however, it is an importantcondition, --and that the successful directors of men be not those who goto the van and lead, unconscious of the gibes and mockery in their rear, but such rather as drive the mob before them with a smiting hand and noinfirmity of purpose. So, if a certain affection for our pastor dwelt inour hearts, no title of respect was there to leaven it and justify hishigh office before Him that consigned the trust; and ever deeper anddeeper we sank in the slough of corruption, until was brought about thispass--that naught but some scourging despotism of the Church shouldacquit us of the fate of Sodom. That such, at the eleventh hour, wasvouchsafed us of God's mercy, it is my purpose to show; and, doubtless, this offering of a loop-hole was to account by reason of the devil'shaving debarked his reserves, as it were, in our port; and so quarteringupon us a soldiery that we were, at no invitation of our own, tomaintain, stood us a certain extenuation. 

It was late in the order of things before in our village so much as arumour of the plague reached us. Newspapers were not in those days, andreports, being by word of mouth, travelled slowly, and were often spentbullets by the time they fell amongst us. Yet, by May, some gossip therewas of the distemper having gotten a hold in certain quarters of Londonand increasing, and this alarmed our people, though it made no abatementof their profligacy. But presently the reports coming thicker, withconfirmation of the terror and panic that was enlarging on all sides, wemust take measures for our safety; though into June and July, when thepestilence was raging, none infected had come our way, and that from ourremote and isolated position. Yet it needs but fear for the crown to thatwickedness that is self-indulgence; and forasmuch as this fear fattenslike a toadstool on the decomposition it springs from, it grew with us tothe proportions that we were set to kill or destroy any that shouldapproach us from the stricken districts. 

And then suddenly there appeared in our midst _he_ that was appointed tobe our scourge and our cautery. 

Whence he came, or how, no man of us could say. Only one day we were acommunity of roysterers and scoffers, impious and abominable, and thenext he was amongst us smiting and thundering. 

Some would have it that he was an old collegiate of our Vicar's, but atlast one of those wandering Dissenters that found never as now the timesopportune to their teachings--a theory to which our minister's treatmentof the stranger gave colour. For from the moment of his appearance hetook the reins of government, as it were, appropriating the pulpit andlaunching his bolts therefrom, with the full consent and encouragement ofthe other. There were those, again, who were resolved that his commissionwas from a high place, whither news of our infamy had reached, and thatwe had best give him a respectful hearing, lest we should run a chance ofhaving our hearing stopped altogether. A few were convinced he was no manat all, but rather a fiend sent to thresh us with the scourge of our owncontriving, that we might be tender, like steak, for the cooking; and yetother few regarded him with terror, as an actual figure or embodiment ofthe distemper. 

But, generally, after the first surprise, the feeling of resentment athis intrusion woke and gained ground, and we were much put about that heshould have thus assumed the pastorship without invitation, quarteringwith our Vicar; who kept himself aloof and was little seen, and seekingto drive us by terror, and amazement, and a great menace of retribution. For, in truth, this was not the method to which we were wont, and it bothangered and disturbed us. 

This feeling would have enlarged the sooner, perhaps, were it not for acertain restraining influence possessed of the new-comer, whichneighboured him with darkness and mystery. For he was above the commontall, and ever appeared in public with a slouched hat, that concealed allthe upper part of his face and showed little otherwise but the denseblack beard that dropped upon his breast like a shadow. 

Now with August came a fresh burst of panic, how the desolation increasedand the land was overrun with swarms of infected persons seeking anasylum from the city; and our anger rose high against the stranger, whoyet dwelt with us and encouraged the distemper of our minds by furiousdenunciations of our guilt. 

Thus far, for all the corruption of our hearts, we had maintained thepractice of church-going, thinking, maybe, poor fools! to hoodwink theAlmighty with a show of reverence; but now, as by a common consent, weneglected the observances and loitered of a Sabbath in the fields, andthither at the last the strange man pursued us and ended the matter. 

For so it fell that at the time of the harvest's ripening a goodish bodyof us males was gathered one Sunday for coolness about the neighbourhoodof the dripping well, whose waters were a tradition, for they had longgone dry. This well was situate in a sort of cave or deep scoop at thefoot of a cliff of limestone, to which the cultivated ground that led upto it fell somewhat. High above, the cliff broke away into a wide stretchof pasture land, but the face of the rock itself was all patched withbramble and little starved birch-trees clutching for foothold; and inlike manner the excavation beneath was half-stifled and gloomed over withundergrowth, so that it looked a place very dismal and uninviting, savein the ardour of the dog-days. 

Within, where had been the basin, was a great shattered hole going downto unknown depths; and this no man had thought to explore, for a mysteryheld about the spot that was doubtless the foster-child of ignorance. 

But to the front of the well and of the cliff stretched a noble field ofcorn, and this field was of an uncommon shape, being, roughly, a vastcircle and a little one joined by a neck and in suggestion not unlike anhour-glass; and into the crop thereof, which was of goodly weight andcondition, were the first sickles to be put on the morrow. 

Now as we stood or lay around, idly discussing of the news, andcongratulating ourselves that we were featly quit of our incubus, to usalong the meadow path, his shadow jumping on the corn, came the verysubject of our gossip. 

He strode up, looking neither to right nor left, and with the first wordthat fell, low and damnatory, from his lips, we knew that the moment hadcome when, whether for good or evil, he intended to cast us from him andacquit himself of further responsibility in our direction. 

"Behold!" he cried, pausing over against us, "I go from among ye! Behold, ye that have not obeyed nor inclined your ear, but have walked every onein the imagination of his evil heart! Saith the Lord, 'I will bring evilupon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shallcry unto Me, I will not hearken unto them. '"

His voice rang out, and a dark silence fell among us. It was pregnant, but with little of humility. We had had enough of this interloper and hisabuse. Then, like Jeremiah, he went to prophesy:--

"I read ye, men of Anathoth, and the murder in your hearts. Ye that haveworshipped the shameful thing and burned incense to Baal--shall I cringethat ye devise against me, or not rather pray to the Lord of Hosts, 'Letme see Thy vengeance on them'? And He answereth, 'I will bring evil uponthe men of Anathoth, even the year of their visitation. '"

Now, though I was no participator in that direful thing that followed, Istood by, nor interfered, and so must share the blame. For there were menrisen all about, and their faces lowering, and it seemed that it would gohard with the stranger were he not more particular. 

But he moved forward, with a stately and commanding gesture, and stoodwith his back to the well-scoop and threatened us and spoke. 

"Lo!" he shrieked, "your hour is upon you! Ye shall be mowed down likeripe corn, and the shadow of your name shall be swept from the earth! Theglass of your iniquity is turned, and when its sand is run through, not aman of ye shall be!"

He raised his arm aloft, and in a moment he was overborne. Even then, asall say, none got sight of his face; but he fought with lowered head, andhis black beard flapped like a wounded crow. But suddenly a boy-child ranforward of the bystanders, crying and screaming, --

"Hurt him not! They are hurting him--oh, me! oh, me!"

And from the sweat and struggle came his voice, gasping, "I spare thelittle children!"

Then only I know of the surge and the crash towards the well-mouth, of aninstant cessation of motion, and immediately of men toiling hither andthither with boulders and huge blocks, which they piled over the rent, and so sealed it with a cromlech of stone. 

II

That, in the heat of rage and of terror, we had gone farther than we hadat first designed, our gloom and our silence on the morrow attested. Truewe were quit of our incubus, but on such terms as not even the severityof the times could excuse. For the man had but chastised us to ourimprovement; and to destroy the scourge is not to condone the offence. For myself, as I bore up the little Margery to my shoulder on my way tothe reaping, I felt the burden of guilt so great as that I found myselfmuttering of an apology to the Lord that I durst put myself into touchwith innocence. "But the walk would fatigue her otherwise, " I murmured;and, when we were come to the field, I took and carried her into theupper or little meadow, out of reach of the scythes, and placed her tosleep amongst the corn, and so left her with a groan. 

But when I was come anew to my comrades, who stood at the lower extremityof the field--and this was the bottom of the hour-glass, so to speak--Iwas aware of a stir amongst them, and, advancing closer, that they wereall intent upon the neighbourhood of the field I had left, staring likedistraught creatures, and holding well together, as if in a panic. Therefore, following the direction of their eyes, and of one that pointedwith rigid finger, I turned me about, and looked whence I had come; andmy heart went with a somersault, and in a moment I was all sick anddazed. 

For I saw, at the upper curve of the meadow, where the well lay in gloom, that a man had sprung out of the earth, as it seemed, and was startedreaping; and the face of this man was all in shadow, from which his beardran out and down like a stream of gall. 

He reaped swiftly and steadily, swinging like a pendulum; but, though thesheaves fell to him right and left, no swish of the scythe came to us, nor any sound but the beating of our own hearts. 

Now, from the first moment of my looking, no doubt was in my lost soulbut that this was him we had destroyed come back to verify his prophecyin ministering to the vengeance of the Lord of Hosts; and at the thoughta deep groan rent my bosom, and was echoed by those about me. Butscarcely was it issued when a second terror smote me as that I nearreeled. Margery--my babe! put to sleep there in the path of the BlackReaper!

At that, though they called to me, I sprang forward like a madman, andrunning along the meadow, through the neck of the glass, reached thelittle thing, and stooped and snatched her into my arms. She was soundand unfrighted, as I felt with a burst of thankfulness; but, lookingabout me, as I turned again to fly, I had near dropped in my tracks forthe sickness and horror I experienced in the nearer neighbourhood of theapparition. For, though it never raised its head, or changed the steadyswing of its shoulders, I knew that it was aware of and was reaping atme. Now, I tell you, it was ten yards away, yet the point of the scythecame gliding upon me silently, like a snake, through the stalks, and atthat I screamed out and ran for my life. 

I escaped, sweating with terror; but when I was sped back to the men, there was all the village collected, and our Vicar to the front, prayingfrom a throat that rattled like a dead leaf in a draught. I know not whathe said, for the low cries of the women filled the air; but his face waswhite as a smock, and his fingers writhed in one another like a knot ofworms. 

"The plague is upon us!" they wailed. "We shall be mowed down like ripecorn!"

And even as they shrieked the Black Reaper paused, and, putting away hisscythe, stooped and gathered up a sheaf in his arms and stood it on end. And, with the very act, a man--one that had been forward in yesterday'sbusiness--fell down amongst us yelling and foaming; and he rent hisbreast in his frenzy, revealing the purple blot thereon, and he passedblaspheming. And the reaper stooped and stooped again, and with everysheaf he gathered together one of us fell stricken and rolled in hisagony, while the rest stood by palsied. 

But, when at length all that was cut was accounted for, and a dozen of uswere gone each to his judgment, and he had taken up his scythe to reapanew, a wild fury woke in the breasts of some of the more abandoned andreckless amongst us. 

"It is not to be tolerated!" they cried. "Let us at once fire the cornand burn this sorcerer!"

And with that, some fire or six of them, emboldened by despair, ran upinto the little field, and, separating, had out each his flint and firedthe crop in his own place, and retreated to the narrow part for safety. 

Now the reaper rested on his scythe, as if unexpectedly acquitted of apart of his labour; but the corn flamed up in these five or sixdirections, and was consumed in each to the compass of a single sheaf:whereat the fire died away. And with its dying the faces of those thathad ventured went black as coal; and they flung up their arms, screaming, and fell prone where they stood, and were hidden from our view. 

Then, indeed, despair seized upon all of us that survived, and we made nodoubt but that we were to be exterminated and wiped from the earth forour sins, as were the men of Anathoth. And for an hour the Black Reapermowed and trussed, till he had cut all from the little upper field andwas approached to the neck of juncture with the lower and larger. Andbefore us that remained, and who were drawn back amongst the trees, weeping and praying, a fifth of our comrades lay foul, and dead, andsweltering, and all blotched over with the dreadful mark of thepestilence. 

Now, as I say, the reaper was nearing the neck of juncture; and so weknew that if he should once pass into the great field towards us andcontinue his mowing, not one of us should be left to give earnest of ourrepentance. 

Then, as it seemed, our Vicar came to a resolution, moving forward with aface all wrapt and entranced; and he strode up the meadow path andapproached the apparition, and stretched out his arms to it entreating. And we saw the other pause, awaiting him; and, as he came near, putforth his hand, and so, gently, on the good old head. But as we looked, catching at our breaths with a little pathos of hope, the priestly facewas thrown back radiant, and the figure of him that would give his lifefor us sank amongst the yet standing corn and disappeared from our sight. 

So at last we yielded ourselves fully to our despair; for if our pastorshould find no mercy, what possibility of it could be for us!

It was in this moment of an uttermost grief and horror, when each stoodapart from his neighbour, fearing the contamination of his presence, thatthere was vouchsafed to me, of God's pity, a wild and sudden inspiration. Still to my neck fastened the little Margery--not frighted, it seemed, but mazed--and other babes there were in plenty, that clung to theirmothers' skirts and peeped out, wondering at the strange show. 

I ran to the front and shrieked: "The children! the children! He will nottouch the little children! Bring them and set them in his path!" And socrying I sped to the neck of meadow, and loosened the soft arms from mythroat, and put the little one down within the corn. 

Now at once the women saw what I would be at, and full a score of themsnatched up their babes and followed me. And here we were reckless forourselves; but we knelt the innocents in one close line across the neckof land, so that the Black Reaper should not find space between any ofthem to swing his scythe. And having done this, we fell back with ourhearts bubbling in our breasts, and we stood panting and watched. 

He had paused over that one full sheaf of his reaping; but now, with thesound of the women's running, he seized his weapon again and set to uponthe narrow belt of corn that yet separated him from the children. Butpresently, coming out upon the tender array, his scythe stopped andtrailed in his hand, and for a full minute he stood like a figure ofstone. Then thrice he walked slowly backwards and forwards along theline, seeking for an interval whereby he might pass; and the childrenlaughed at him like silver bells, showing no fear, and perchance meetingthat of love in his eyes that was hidden from us. 

Then of a sudden he came to before the midmost of the line, and, while wedrew our breath like dying souls, stooped and snapped his blade acrosshis knee, and, holding the two parts in his hand, turned and strode backinto the shadow of the dripping well. There arrived, he paused once more, and, twisting him about, waved his hand once to us and vanished into theblackness. But there were those who affirmed that in that instant of histurning, his face was revealed, and that it was a face radiant andbeautiful as an angel's. 

Such is the history of the wild judgment that befell us, and by grace ofthe little children was foregone; and such was the stranger whose nameno man ever heard tell, but whom many have since sought to identify withthat spirit of the pestilence that entered into men's hearts andconfounded them, so that they saw visions and were afterwards confused intheir memories. 

But this I may say, that when at last our courage would fetch us to thatlittle field of death, we found it to be all blackened and blasted, so asnothing would take root there then or ever since; and it was as if, afterall the golden sand of the hour-glass was run away and the lives of themost impious with it, the destroyer saw fit to stay his hand for sake ofthe babes that he had pronounced innocent, and for such as were spared towitness to His judgment. And this I do here, with a heart as contrite asif it were the morrow of the visitation, the which with me it ever hasremained. 

A VOICE FROM THE PIT

"Signor, we are arrived, " whispered the old man in my ear; and he put outa sudden cold hand, corded like melon rind, to stay me in the stumblingdarkness. 

We were on a tilted table-land of the mountain; and, looking forth andbelow, the far indigo crescent of the bay, where it swept towardsCastellamare, seemed to rise up at me, as if it were a perpendicularwall, across which the white crests of the waves flew like ghost moths. 

We skirted a boulder, and came upon a field of sleek purple lava sown allover with little lemon jets of silent smoke, which in their wan andmelancholy glow might have been the corpse lights of those innumerabledead whose tombstone was the mountain itself. 

Far away to the right the great projecting socket of the crater flickeredintermittently with a nerve of fire. It was like the glinting of thewatchful eye of some vast Crustacean, and in that harsh and stupendousdesolation seemed the final crown and expression of utter inhumanity. 

I started upon hearing the low whisper of my companion at my ear. 

"In the bay yesterday the Signor saved my life. I give the Signor, inreturn, my life's secret. "

He seized my right hand in his left with a sinewy clutch, and pointed astiff finger at the luminous blots. 

"See there, and there, and there, " he shrilled. "One floats and waverslike a spineless ribbon of seaweed in the water; another burns with asteady radiance; a third blares from its fissure like a flame driven bythe blowpipe. It is all a question of the under-draught, and some mayfeel it a little, and some a little more or a little less. Ah! but I willshow you one that feels it not at all--a hole, a narrow shaft that goesstraight down into the pit of the great hell, and is cold as the mouth ofa barbel. "

The bones of his face stood out like rocks against sand, and the pupilsof his maniac eyes were glazed or fell into shadow as the volcanolightnings fluttered. 

Suddenly he drew me to a broken pile of sulphur rock lying tumbledagainst a ridge of the mountain that ran towards the crater. It layheaped, a fused and fantastic ruin; and in a moment the old man leaptfrom me, and was tugging by main strength a vast fragment from its place. 

I leaned over his shoulder, and looked down upon the hollow revealed bythe displaced boulder. It was like the bell of a mighty trumpet, and inthe middle a puckered opening seemed to suck inwards, as it were themouth of some subterranean monster risen to the surface of the world forair. 

"Quick! quick!" muttered Paolo. "The Signor must place his ear to thehole. "

With a little odd stir at my heart, I dropped upon my knees and leaned myhead deep into the cup. I must have stayed thus for a full minute beforeI drew myself back and looked up at the old mountaineer. His eyes gazeddown into mine with mad intensity. 

"_Si! si!_" he whispered. "What didst thou hear?"

"I heard a long surging thunder, Paolo, and the deep shrill screaming ofmany gas jets. "

He bent down, with livid face. 

"Signor, it is the booming of the everlasting fire, and thou hast heardthe voices of the damned. "

"No, my friend, no. But it is a marvellous transmission of the uproar ofhidden forces. "

He leapt to the shallow pit. 

"Listen and believe!" he cried; and funnelling his hands about his lips, he stooped over the central hole. 

"Marco! Marco!" he screeched, in a piercing voice. 

Something answered back. What was it? A malformed and twisted echo? Awhistle of imprisoned steam tricked into some horrible caricature of ahuman voice?

"Paolo!" it seemed to wail, weak and faint with agony. "_L'arqua, l'arqua_, Paolo!"

The old man sprang to his feet and, looking down upon me in a sort ofterrible triumph, unslung a water-flask from his belt, and, pulling outthe cork, poured the cold liquid down into the puckered orifice. Then Ifelt his clutch on my arm again. 

"He drinks!" he cried. "Listen and thou wilt understand. "

I rose with a ghost of a laugh, and once more addressed my ear to theopening. 

From unthinkable depths came up a strange, gloating sound, as from aravenous throat made vibrant with ecstasy. 

"Paolo, " I cried, as I rose and stood before him--and there was anadmonitory note in my voice--"a feather may decide the balance. Bewaremeddling with hidden thunders, or thou mayst set rolling such anothertombstone as that on which these corpse fires are yet flaming. "

And he only answered me, set and deathly, --

"We of the mountains, Signor, know more things than we may tell of. "