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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol.
+II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, by Ambrose Bierce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2004 [EBook #13334]
+[Last updated: January 26, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMBROSE BIERCE, VOL. II ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Carol David and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE COLLECTED
+WORKS OF
+AMBROSE BIERCE
+
+VOLUME II
+
+
+IN THE MIDST OF LIFE
+
+TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS
+
+
+
+Originally Published 1909
+
+
+PREFACE
+TO THE FIRST EDITION
+
+
+Denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this
+book owes itself to Mr. E.L.G. Steele, merchant, of this city. In
+attesting Mr. Steele's faith in his judgment and his friend, it will
+serve its author's main and best ambition.
+
+A.B.
+
+SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 4, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY                                                 15
+AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE                                     27
+CHICKAMAUGA                                                           46
+A SON OF THE GODS                                                     58
+ONE OF THE MISSING                                                    71
+KILLED AT RESACA                                                      93
+THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH                                        105
+THE COUP DE GRACE                                                    122
+PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER                                         133
+AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS                                                146
+THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE                                            165
+ONE KIND OF OFFICER                                                  178
+ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN                                                 197
+GEORGE THURSTON                                                      209
+THE MOCKING-BIRD                                                     218
+
+CIVILIANS
+
+THE MAN OUT OF THE NOSE                                              233
+AN ADVENTURE AT BROWNVILLE                                           247
+THE FAMOUS GILSON BEQUEST                                            266
+THE APPLICANT                                                        281
+A WATCHER BY THE DEAD                                                290
+THE MAN AND THE SNAKE                                                311
+A HOLY TERROR                                                        324
+THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS                                            350
+THE BOARDED WINDOW                                                   364
+A LADY FROM RED HORSE                                                373
+THE EYES OF THE PANTHER                                              385
+
+
+
+
+
+SOLDIERS
+
+
+
+
+A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY
+
+I
+
+One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in a
+clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia. He lay at
+full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head
+upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his
+rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a
+slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt he
+might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty.
+But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, death being the just
+and legal penalty of his crime.
+
+The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road
+which after ascending southward a steep acclivity to that point turned
+sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one hundred
+yards. There it turned southward again and went zigzagging downward
+through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a large flat
+rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from which the
+road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped from its
+outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet to the
+tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another spur
+of the same cliff. Had he been awake he would have commanded a view, not
+only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of the
+entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him giddy
+to look.
+
+The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to
+the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which
+flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground
+looked hardly larger than an ordinary door-yard, but was really several
+acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing
+forest. Away beyond it rose a line of giant cliffs similar to those upon
+which we are supposed to stand in our survey of the savage scene, and
+through which the road had somehow made its climb to the summit. The
+configuration of the valley, indeed, was such that from this point of
+observation it seemed entirely shut in, and one could but have wondered
+how the road which found a way out of it had found a way into it, and
+whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that parted the
+meadow more than a thousand feet below.
+
+No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theatre of
+war; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap, in
+which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved
+an army to submission, lay five regiments of Federal infantry. They had
+marched all the previous day and night and were resting. At nightfall
+they would take to the road again, climb to the place where their
+unfaithful sentinel now slept, and descending the other slope of the
+ridge fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight. Their hope was to
+surprise it, for the road led to the rear of it. In case of failure,
+their position would be perilous in the extreme; and fail they surely
+would should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the movement.
+
+II
+
+The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named
+Carter Druse. He was the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had
+known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were
+able to command in the mountain country of western Virginia. His home
+was but a few miles from where he now lay. One morning he had risen from
+the breakfast-table and said, quietly but gravely: "Father, a Union
+regiment has arrived at Grafton. I am going to join it."
+
+The father lifted his leonine head, looked at the son a moment in
+silence, and replied: "Well, go, sir, and whatever may occur do what you
+conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must get
+on without you. Should we both live to the end of the war, we will speak
+further of the matter. Your mother, as the physician has informed you,
+is in a most critical condition; at the best she cannot be with us
+longer than a few weeks, but that time is precious. It would be better
+not to disturb her."
+
+So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, who returned the
+salute with a stately courtesy that masked a breaking heart, left the
+home of his childhood to go soldiering. By conscience and courage, by
+deeds of devotion and daring, he soon commended himself to his fellows
+and his officers; and it was to these qualities and to some knowledge of
+the country that he owed his selection for his present perilous duty at
+the extreme outpost. Nevertheless, fatigue had been stronger than
+resolution and he had fallen asleep. What good or bad angel came in a
+dream to rouse him from his state of crime, who shall say? Without a
+movement, without a sound, in the profound silence and the languor of
+the late afternoon, some invisible messenger of fate touched with
+unsealing finger the eyes of his consciousness--whispered into the ear
+of his spirit the mysterious awakening word which no human lips ever
+have spoken, no human memory ever has recalled. He quietly raised his
+forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the
+laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his
+rifle.
+
+His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal,
+the cliff,--motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and
+sharply outlined against the sky,--was an equestrian statue of
+impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse,
+straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in
+the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costume
+harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement and
+caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had
+no points of high light. A carbine strikingly foreshortened lay across
+the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at
+the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In
+silhouette against the sky the profile of the horse was cut with the
+sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the
+confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly away,
+showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to
+the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by
+the soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy the
+group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.
+
+For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had
+slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art
+reared upon that eminence to commemorate the deeds of an heroic past of
+which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was dispelled by a
+slight movement of the group: the horse, without moving its feet, had
+drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man remained
+immobile as before. Broad awake and keenly alive to the significance of
+the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle against his cheek
+by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked the
+piece, and glancing through the sights covered a vital spot of the
+horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well
+with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman turned his head and
+looked in the direction of his concealed foeman--seemed to look into his
+very face, into his eyes, into his brave, compassionate heart.
+
+Is it then so terrible to kill an enemy in war--an enemy who has
+surprised a secret vital to the safety of one's self and comrades--an
+enemy more formidable for his knowledge than all his army for its
+numbers? Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint,
+and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising,
+falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand
+fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested
+on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy
+soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.
+
+It was not for long; in another moment his face was raised from earth,
+his hands resumed their places on the rifle, his forefinger sought the
+trigger; mind, heart, and eyes were clear, conscience and reason sound.
+He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send him
+dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was
+plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush--without warning, without a
+moment's spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken
+prayer, he must be sent to his account. But no--there is a hope; he may
+have discovered nothing--perhaps he is but admiring the sublimity of the
+landscape. If permitted, he may turn and ride carelessly away in the
+direction whence he came. Surely it will be possible to judge at the
+instant of his withdrawing whether he knows. It may well be that his
+fixity of attention--Druse turned his head and looked through the deeps
+of air downward, as from the surface to the bottom of a translucent sea.
+He saw creeping across the green meadow a sinuous line of figures of men
+and horses--some foolish commander was permitting the soldiers of his
+escort to water their beasts in the open, in plain view from a dozen
+summits!
+
+Druse withdrew his eyes from the valley and fixed them again upon the
+group of man and horse in the sky, and again it was through the sights
+of his rifle. But this time his aim was at the horse. In his memory, as
+if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their
+parting: "Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty." He
+was calm now. His teeth were firmly but not rigidly closed; his nerves
+were as tranquil as a sleeping babe's--not a tremor affected any muscle
+of his body; his breathing, until suspended in the act of taking aim,
+was regular and slow. Duty had conquered; the spirit had said to the
+body: "Peace, be still." He fired.
+
+III
+
+An officer of the Federal force, who in a spirit of adventure or in
+quest of knowledge had left the hidden _bivouac_ in the valley, and with
+aimless feet had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space
+near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by
+pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before
+him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines
+the gigantic face of rock, towering to so great a height above him that
+it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line
+against the sky. It presented a clean, vertical profile against a
+background of blue sky to a point half the way down, and of distant
+hills, hardly less blue, thence to the tops of the trees at its base.
+Lifting his eyes to the dizzy altitude of its summit the officer saw an
+astonishing sight--a man on horseback riding down into the valley
+through the air!
+
+Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in
+the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger from too
+impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward,
+waving like a plume. His hands were concealed in the cloud of the
+horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level as if every
+hoof-stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a
+wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the
+legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But
+this was a flight!
+
+Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in the
+sky--half believing himself the chosen scribe of some new Apocalypse,
+the officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs
+failed him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing
+sound in the trees--a sound that died without an echo--and all was
+still.
+
+The officer rose to his feet, trembling. The familiar sensation of an
+abraded shin recalled his dazed faculties. Pulling himself together he
+ran rapidly obliquely away from the cliff to a point distant from its
+foot; thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he
+naturally failed. In the fleeting instant of his vision his imagination
+had been so wrought upon by the apparent grace and ease and intention of
+the marvelous performance that it did not occur to him that the line of
+march of aerial cavalry is directly downward, and that he could find the
+objects of his search at the very foot of the cliff. A half-hour later
+he returned to camp.
+
+This officer was a wise man; he knew better than to tell an incredible
+truth. He said nothing of what he had seen. But when the commander asked
+him if in his scout he had learned anything of advantage to the
+expedition he answered:
+
+"Yes, sir; there is no road leading down into this valley from the
+southward."
+
+The commander, knowing better, smiled.
+
+IV
+
+After firing his shot, Private Carter Druse reloaded his rifle and
+resumed his watch. Ten minutes had hardly passed when a Federal sergeant
+crept cautiously to him on hands and knees. Druse neither turned his
+head nor looked at him, but lay without motion or sign of recognition.
+
+"Did you fire?" the sergeant whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"At what?"
+
+"A horse. It was standing on yonder rock--pretty far out. You see it is
+no longer there. It went over the cliff."
+
+The man's face was white, but he showed no other sign of emotion. Having
+answered, he turned away his eyes and said no more. The sergeant did not
+understand.
+
+"See here, Druse," he said, after a moment's silence, "it's no use
+making a mystery. I order you to report. Was there anybody on the
+horse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"My father."
+
+The sergeant rose to his feet and walked away. "Good God!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
+
+I
+
+A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down
+into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his
+back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck.
+It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack
+fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers
+supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his
+executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a
+sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short
+remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of
+his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge
+stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say,
+vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the
+forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural
+position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to
+be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of
+the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that
+traversed it.
+
+Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran
+straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost
+to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of
+the stream was open ground--a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of
+vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure
+through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the
+bridge. Mid-way of the slope between bridge and fort were the
+spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the
+butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly
+backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A
+lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon
+the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of
+four at the centre of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the
+bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of
+the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain
+stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates,
+but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is
+to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most
+familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity
+are forms of deference.
+
+The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five
+years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit,
+which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose,
+firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed
+straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting
+frock-coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his
+eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one
+would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently
+this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision
+for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
+
+The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside
+and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The
+sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately
+behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements
+left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the
+same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end
+upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth.
+This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was
+now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter
+would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down
+between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as
+simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes
+bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his
+gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his
+feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes
+followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a
+sluggish stream!
+
+He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and
+children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding
+mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the
+soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he became
+conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear
+ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp,
+distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer
+upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it
+was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its
+recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He
+awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension.
+The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became
+maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in
+strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he
+feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
+
+He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free
+my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the
+stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously,
+reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God,
+is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond
+the invader's farthest advance."
+
+As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed
+into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain
+nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
+
+II
+
+Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected
+Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a
+politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently
+devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature,
+which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking
+service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns
+ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious
+restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of
+the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,
+would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he
+could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South,
+no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the
+character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good
+faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of
+the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
+
+One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench
+near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the
+gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to
+serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her
+husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from
+the front.
+
+"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting
+ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put
+it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has
+issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian
+caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains
+will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
+
+"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
+
+"About thirty miles."
+
+"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
+
+"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single
+sentinel at this end of the bridge."
+
+"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the
+picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar,
+smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
+
+The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I
+observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of
+driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now
+dry and would burn like tow."
+
+The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked
+her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later,
+after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the
+direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
+
+III
+
+As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost
+consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was
+awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp pressure
+upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant
+agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of
+his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined
+lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid
+periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to
+an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing
+but a feeling of fulness--of congestion. These sensations were
+unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was
+already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He
+was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he
+was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung
+through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all
+at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with
+the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all
+was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the
+rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no
+additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already
+suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at
+the bottom of a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his
+eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how
+distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became
+fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow
+and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it
+with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and
+drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot.
+No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
+
+He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist
+apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle
+his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without
+interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!--what magnificent, what
+superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell
+away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each
+side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first
+one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it
+away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a
+water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these
+words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by
+the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly;
+his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly,
+gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole
+body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his
+disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water
+vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He
+felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest
+expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs
+engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a
+shriek!
+
+He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed,
+preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of
+his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record
+of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and
+heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on
+the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the
+veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the
+brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig
+to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a
+million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the
+eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the
+strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their
+boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes
+and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
+
+He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the
+visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point,
+and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the
+captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in
+silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing
+at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others
+were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms
+gigantic.
+
+Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly
+within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He
+heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at
+his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The
+man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his
+own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye
+and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all
+famous markmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
+
+A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was
+again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound
+of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him
+and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued
+all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although
+no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread
+significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the
+lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly
+and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and
+enforcing tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured
+intervals fell those cruel words:
+
+"Attention, company!... Shoulder arms!... Ready!... Aim!... Fire!"
+
+Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his
+ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the
+volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal,
+singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched
+him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One
+lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he
+snatched it out.
+
+As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a
+long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream--nearer to
+safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods
+flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels,
+turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels
+fired again, independently and ineffectually.
+
+The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming
+vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and
+legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
+
+"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a
+second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has
+probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I
+cannot dodge them all!"
+
+An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud,
+rushing sound, _diminuendo_, which seemed to travel back through the air
+to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its
+deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him,
+blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As
+he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard
+the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it
+was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
+
+"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use
+a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will
+apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile.
+That is a good gun."
+
+Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top.
+The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men
+--all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their
+colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw.
+He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity
+of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments
+he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream
+--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which concealed him
+from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one
+of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He
+dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and
+audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could
+think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the
+bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their
+arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate
+light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in
+their branches the music of aeolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his
+escape--was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
+
+A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head
+roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random
+farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged
+into the forest.
+
+All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The
+forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not
+even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a
+region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
+
+By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his
+wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in
+what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a
+city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no
+dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human
+habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both
+sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson
+in perspective. Over-head, as he looked up through this rift in the
+wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange
+constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a
+secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of
+singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he distinctly
+heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
+
+His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly
+swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had
+bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His
+tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it
+forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf
+had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the roadway
+beneath his feet!
+
+Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking,
+for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a
+delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it,
+and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have
+traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the
+wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking
+fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At
+the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable
+joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she
+is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her
+he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white
+light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then
+all is darkness and silence!
+
+Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently
+from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHICKAMAUGA
+
+One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a
+small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense
+of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and
+adventure; for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for
+thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and
+conquest--victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries,
+whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its
+race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great
+sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a
+heritage.
+
+The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In
+his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against
+naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a
+civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the
+warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man
+loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to
+make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would
+hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely,
+as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the
+sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures
+of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver's art.
+Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes
+attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military
+error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found
+himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters
+barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with
+illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the
+spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable
+in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some
+bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he
+made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary
+foe, putting all to the sword.
+
+Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to
+his base of operations. Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like
+one, the mightiest, he could not
+
+                           curb the lust for war,
+  Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.
+
+Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself
+confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was
+following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before
+it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not
+in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother,
+weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little
+heart beating hard with terror--breathless, blind with tears--lost in
+the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet
+through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he
+lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the
+stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a
+companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above
+his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking
+from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away
+was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in
+celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial
+enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black
+were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother's heart
+was breaking for her missing child.
+
+Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of
+the evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he
+had rested, and he no longer wept. With some blind instinct which
+impelled to action he struggled through the undergrowth about him and
+came to a more open ground--on his right the brook, to the left a
+gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees; over all, the gathering
+gloom of twilight. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It
+frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction
+whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward
+the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving
+object which he took to be some large animal--a dog, a pig--he could not
+name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew
+of nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But
+something in form or movement of this object--something in the
+awkwardness of its approach--told him that it was not a bear, and
+curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on
+gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the
+long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was
+half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait.
+Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that
+it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many
+more; the whole open space about him was alive with them--all moving
+toward the brook.
+
+They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their
+hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms
+hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell
+prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike,
+save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in
+pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting
+now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their
+movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as
+one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood
+behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in
+motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again
+go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange
+gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again,
+clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes
+seen to do in public prayer.
+
+Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by
+an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like
+babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. He
+moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into
+their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly
+white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this--
+something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements--
+reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the
+circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they
+crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic
+contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it
+was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father's negroes creep upon their
+hands and knees for his amusement--had ridden them so, "making believe"
+they were his horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures
+from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. The man sank
+upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground
+as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that
+lacked a lower jaw--from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red
+gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The
+unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave
+this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and
+breast by the blood of its quarry. The man rose to his knees, the child
+to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child; the child, terrified
+at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took
+a more serious view of the situation. And so the clumsy multitude
+dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime--moved
+forward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a
+sound of going--in silence profound, absolute.
+
+Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through
+the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks
+and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck
+the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured
+their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching
+their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which
+so many of them were freaked and maculated. It sparkled on buttons and
+bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward
+the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible
+companions; in a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng--not
+much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the
+lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march,
+conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that
+his forces did not straggle. Surely such a leader never before had such
+a following.
+
+Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment
+of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the
+leader's mind, were coupled no significant associations: an occasional
+blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together
+with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken rifle--such
+things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the
+"spoor" of men flying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek,
+which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud by
+the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use
+of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both
+directions; the ground had been twice passed over--in advance and in
+retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their
+more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in
+thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and
+re-forming in lines, had passed the child on every side--had almost
+trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not
+awakened him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had
+fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry,
+the shock of the cannon, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting."
+He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with
+perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial
+environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead
+who had died to make the glory.
+
+The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek,
+reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing
+the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the
+vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were
+many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood; the
+less desperately wounded had stained them in crossing. On them, too, the
+child now crossed with eager steps; he was going to the fire. As he
+stood upon the farther bank he turned about to look at the companions of
+his march. The advance was arriving at the creek. The stronger had
+already drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces into the
+flood. Three or four who lay without motion appeared to have no heads.
+At this the child's eyes expanded with wonder; even his hospitable
+understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as
+that. After slaking their thirst these men had not had the strength to
+back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. They were
+drowned. In rear of these, the open spaces of the forest showed the
+leader as many formless figures of his grim command as at first; but not
+nearly so many were in motion. He waved his cap for their encouragement
+and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the guiding
+light--a pillar of fire to this strange exodus.
+
+Confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of
+woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a
+fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquet with his
+responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling.
+Desolation everywhere! In all the wide glare not a living thing was
+visible. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced
+with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about, collecting
+fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in
+from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he
+flung in his sword--a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His
+military career was at an end.
+
+Shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an
+oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. He stood
+considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with
+its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little
+world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He
+recognized the blazing building as his own home!
+
+For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran
+with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. There,
+conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a
+woman--the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched
+full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and
+full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away,
+and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a
+frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles--the work
+of a shell.
+
+The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He
+uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries--something
+between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey--a
+startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child
+was a deaf mute.
+
+Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the
+wreck.
+
+
+
+
+A SON OF THE GODS
+
+A STUDY IN THE PRESENT TENSE
+
+A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left
+and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open
+but not venturing into it, long lines of troops, halted. The wood is
+alive with them, and full of confused noises--the occasional rattle of
+wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to cover the
+advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound of
+innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the
+trees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well
+in front--not altogether exposed--many of them intently regarding the
+crest of a hill a mile away in the direction of the interrupted advance.
+For this powerful army, moving in battle order through a forest, has met
+with a formidable obstacle--the open country. The crest of that gentle
+hill a mile away has a sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs a
+stone wall extending to left and right a great distance. Behind the wall
+is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather
+straggling order. Among the trees--what? It is necessary to know.
+
+Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously, we were fighting
+somewhere; always there was cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings
+of musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the enemy's, we seldom
+knew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at daybreak the
+enemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, across
+which we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through the
+debris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the
+woods beyond.
+
+How curiously we had regarded everything! how odd it all had seemed!
+Nothing had appeared quite familiar; the most commonplace objects--an
+old saddle, a splintered wheel, a forgotten canteen--everything had
+related something of the mysterious personality of those strange men who
+had been killing us. The soldier never becomes wholly familiar with the
+conception of his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest himself of
+the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently
+conditioned, in an environment not altogether of the earth. The smallest
+vestiges of them rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks
+of them as inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them,
+they appear farther away, and therefore larger, than they really are--
+like objects in a fog. He is somewhat in awe of them.
+
+From the edge of the wood leading up the acclivity are the tracks of
+horses and wheels--the wheels of cannon. The yellow grass is beaten down
+by the feet of infantry. Clearly they have passed this way in thousands;
+they have not withdrawn by the country roads. This is significant--it is
+the difference between retiring and retreating.
+
+That group of horsemen is our commander, his staff and escort. He is
+facing the distant crest, holding his field-glass against his eyes with
+both hands, his elbows needlessly elevated. It is a fashion; it seems to
+dignify the act; we are all addicted to it. Suddenly he lowers the glass
+and says a few words to those about him. Two or three aides detach
+themselves from the group and canter away into the woods, along the
+lines in each direction. We did not hear his words, but we know them:
+"Tell General X. to send forward the skirmish line." Those of us who
+have been out of place resume our positions; the men resting at ease
+straighten themselves and the ranks are re-formed without a command.
+Some of us staff officers dismount and look at our saddle girths; those
+already on the ground remount.
+
+Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the open ground comes a young
+officer on a snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is scarlet. What a
+fool! No one who has ever been in action but remembers how naturally
+every rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no one but has
+observed how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That such colors
+are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the most
+astonishing of all the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem to
+have been devised to increase the death-rate.
+
+This young officer is in full uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleam
+with bullion--a blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War. A wave of
+derisive laughter runs abreast of him all along the line. But how
+handsome he is!--with what careless grace he sits his horse!
+
+He reins up within a respectful distance of the corps commander and
+salutes. The old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently knows him. A
+brief colloquy between them is going on; the young man seems to be
+preferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to grant. Let
+us ride a little nearer. Ah! too late--it is ended. The young officer
+salutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest of
+the hill!
+
+A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart,
+now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to his
+bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. _Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la!_
+The skirmishers halt in their tracks.
+
+Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is riding
+at a walk, straight up the long slope, with never a turn of the head.
+How glorious! Gods! what would we not give to be in his place--with his
+soul! He does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs easily at his
+side. The breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it smartly.
+The sunshine rests upon his shoulder-straps, lovingly, like a visible
+benediction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixed
+upon him with an intensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten thousand
+hearts keep quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his snowy steed.
+He is not alone--he draws all souls after him. But we remember that we
+laughed! On and on, straight for the hedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a
+look backward. O, if he would but turn--if he could but see the love,
+the adoration, the atonement!
+
+Not a word is spoken; the populous depths of the forest still murmur
+with their unseen and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe is
+silence. The burly commander is an equestrian statue of himself. The
+mounted staff officers, their field glasses up, are motionless all. The
+line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at a new kind of
+"attention," each man in the attitude in which he was caught by the
+consciousness of what is going on. All these hardened and impenitent
+man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a fact familiar to
+their every-day observation; who sleep on hills trembling with the
+thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play
+at cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends--all are watching
+with suspended breath and beating hearts the outcome of an act involving
+the life of one man. Such is the magnetism of courage and devotion.
+
+If now you should turn your head you would see a simultaneous movement
+among the spectators--a start, as if they had received an electric
+shock--and looking forward again to the now distant horseman you would
+see that he has in that instant altered his direction and is riding at
+an angle to his former course. The spectators suppose the sudden
+deflection to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; but take this
+field-glass and you will observe that he is riding toward a break in the
+wall and hedge. He means, if not killed, to ride through and overlook
+the country beyond.
+
+You are not to forget the nature of this man's act; it is not permitted
+to you to think of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other hand,
+a needless sacrifice of self. If the enemy has not retreated he is in
+force on that ridge. The investigator will encounter nothing less than a
+line-of-battle; there is no need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to
+give warning of our approach; our attacking lines will be visible,
+conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground the
+moment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheet of
+rifle bullets in which nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is
+there, it would be madness to attack him in front; he must be manoeuvred
+out by the immemorial plan of threatening his line of communication, as
+necessary to his existence as to the diver at the bottom of the sea his
+air tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there? There is but one
+way,--somebody must go and see. The natural and customary thing to do is
+to send forward a line of skirmishers. But in this case they will answer
+in the affirmative with all their lives; the enemy, crouching in double
+ranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will wait until
+it is possible to count each assailant's teeth. At the first volley a
+half of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it can
+accomplish the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for gratified
+curiosity! At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchase
+knowledge! "Let me pay all," says this gallant man--this military
+Christ!
+
+There is no hope except the hope against hope that the crest is clear.
+True, he might prefer capture to death. So long as he advances, the line
+will not fire--why should it? He can safely ride into the hostile ranks
+and become a prisoner of war. But this would defeat his object. It would
+not answer our question; it is necessary either that he return unharmed
+or be shot to death before our eyes. Only so shall we know how to act.
+If captured--why, that might have been done by a half-dozen stragglers.
+
+Now begins an extraordinary contest of intellect between a man and an
+army. Our horseman, now within a quarter of a mile of the crest,
+suddenly wheels to the left and gallops in a direction parallel to it.
+He has caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all. Some slight
+advantage of ground has enabled him to overlook a part of the line. If
+he were here he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless; he
+must make the best use of the few minutes of life remaining to him, by
+compelling the enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly as
+possible--which, naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. Not
+a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not a cannoneer at those masked and
+shotted guns, but knows the needs of the situation, the imperative duty
+of forbearance. Besides, there has been time enough to forbid them all
+to fire. True, a single rifle-shot might drop him and be no great
+disclosure. But firing is infectious--and see how rapidly he moves, with
+never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to take a new
+direction, never directly backward toward us, never directly forward
+toward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass; it seems
+occurring within pistol-shot; we see all but the enemy, whose presence,
+whose thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye there is
+nothing but a black figure on a white horse, tracing slow zigzags
+against the slope of a distant hill--so slowly they seem almost to
+creep.
+
+Now--the glass again--he has tired of his failure, or sees his error, or
+has gone mad; he is dashing directly forward at the wall, as if to take
+it at a leap, hedge and all! One moment only and he wheels right about
+and is speeding like the wind straight down the slope--toward his
+friends, toward his death! Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce
+roll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards to right and left.
+This is as instantly dissipated by the wind, and before the rattle of
+the rifles reaches us he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has but
+pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous
+cheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of our
+feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away. Away,
+indeed--they are making directly to our left, parallel to the now
+steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry is
+continuous, and every bullet's target is that courageous heart.
+
+Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes upward from behind the wall.
+Another and another--a dozen roll up before the thunder of the
+explosions and the humming of the missiles reach our ears and the
+missiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into our
+covert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporary
+distraction, a passing thought of self.
+
+The dust drifts away. Incredible!--that enchanted horse and rider have
+passed a ravine and are climbing another slope to unveil another
+conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host. Another
+moment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and strikes
+the air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again--the
+man has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect,
+motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head.
+His face is toward us. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face
+and moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downward
+curve. It is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity. It is a hero's
+salute to death and history.
+
+Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to cheer; they are choking
+with emotion; they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch their
+weapons and press tumultuously forward into the open. The skirmishers,
+without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, like
+hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open in full
+chorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest,
+seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud and the great shot pitch
+roaring down among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges
+from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on
+its burnished arms. The rear battalions alone are in obedience; they
+preserve their proper distance from the insurgent front.
+
+The commander has not moved. He now removes his field-glass from his
+eyes and glances to the right and left. He sees the human current
+flowing on either side of him and his huddled escort, like tide waves
+parted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face; he is thinking.
+Again he directs his eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malign and
+awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler. _Tra-la-la!
+Tra-la-la!_ The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it. It is
+repeated by all the bugles of all the sub-ordinate commanders; the sharp
+metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance and
+penetrate the sound of the cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colors
+move slowly back; the lines face about and sullenly follow, bearing
+their wounded; the skirmishers return, gathering up the dead.
+
+Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful body
+is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside--could it
+not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion? Would
+one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the
+divine, eternal plan?
+
+
+
+
+ONE OF THE MISSING
+
+Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sherman's army, then
+confronting the enemy at and about Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned
+his back upon a small group of officers with whom he had been talking in
+low tones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared in
+a forest. None of the men in line behind the works had said a word to
+him, nor had he so much as nodded to them in passing, but all who saw
+understood that this brave man had been intrusted with some perilous
+duty. Jerome Searing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks; he
+was detailed for service at division headquarters, being borne upon the
+rolls as an orderly. "Orderly" is a word covering a multitude of duties.
+An orderly may be a messenger, a clerk, an officer's servant--anything.
+He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders and
+army regulations. Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favor,
+upon accident. Private Searing, an incomparable marksman, young, hardy,
+intelligent and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general commanding
+his division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing what
+was in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, but
+formed a fraction of the line of the army; nor was he satisfied to
+receive his knowledge of his _vis-a-vis_ through the customary channels;
+he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by the corps commander
+and the collisions of pickets and skirmishers. Hence Jerome Searing,
+with his extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes, and
+truthful tongue. On this occasion his instructions were simple: to get
+as near the enemy's lines as possible and learn all that he could.
+
+In a few moments he had arrived at the picket-line, the men on duty
+there lying in groups of two and four behind little banks of earth
+scooped out of the slight depression in which they lay, their rifles
+protruding from the green boughs with which they had masked their small
+defenses. The forest extended without a break toward the front, so
+solemn and silent that only by an effort of the imagination could it be
+conceived as populous with armed men, alert and vigilant--a forest
+formidable with possibilities of battle. Pausing a moment in one of
+these rifle-pits to apprise the men of his intention Searing crept
+stealthily forward on his hands and knees and was soon lost to view in a
+dense thicket of underbrush.
+
+"That is the last of him," said one of the men; "I wish I had his rifle;
+those fellows will hurt some of us with it."
+
+Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground and
+growth to give himself better cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, his
+ears took note of every sound. He stilled his breathing, and at the
+cracking of a twig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged the
+earth. It was slow work, but not tedious; the danger made it exciting,
+but by no physical signs was the excitement manifest. His pulse was as
+regular, his nerves were as steady as if he were trying to trap a
+sparrow.
+
+"It seems a long time," he thought, "but I cannot have come very far; I
+am still alive."
+
+He smiled at his own method of estimating distance, and crept forward. A
+moment later he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth and lay
+motionless, minute after minute. Through a narrow opening in the bushes
+he had caught sight of a small mound of yellow clay--one of the enemy's
+rifle-pits. After some little time he cautiously raised his head, inch
+by inch, then his body upon his hands, spread out on each side of him,
+all the while intently regarding the hillock of clay. In another moment
+he was upon his feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward with
+little attempt at concealment. He had rightly interpreted the signs,
+whatever they were; the enemy was gone.
+
+To assure himself beyond a doubt before going back to report upon so
+important a matter, Searing pushed forward across the line of abandoned
+pits, running from cover to cover in the more open forest, his eyes
+vigilant to discover possible stragglers. He came to the edge of a
+plantation--one of those forlorn, deserted homesteads of the last years
+of the war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with broken fences and desolate
+with vacant buildings having blank apertures in place of doors and
+windows. After a keen reconnoissance from the safe seclusion of a clump
+of young pines Searing ran lightly across a field and through an orchard
+to a small structure which stood apart from the other farm buildings, on
+a slight elevation. This he thought would enable him to overlook a large
+scope of country in the direction that he supposed the enemy to have
+taken in withdrawing. This building, which had originally consisted of a
+single room elevated upon four posts about ten feet high, was now little
+more than a roof; the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks
+loosely piled on the ground below or resting on end at various angles,
+not wholly torn from their fastenings above. The supporting posts were
+themselves no longer vertical. It looked as if the whole edifice would
+go down at the touch of a finger.
+
+Concealing himself in the debris of joists and flooring Searing looked
+across the open ground between his point of view and a spur of Kennesaw
+Mountain, a half-mile away. A road leading up and across this spur was
+crowded with troops--the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, their
+gun-barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight.
+
+Searing had now learned all that he could hope to know. It was his duty
+to return to his own command with all possible speed and report his
+discovery. But the gray column of Confederates toiling up the mountain
+road was singularly tempting. His rifle--an ordinary "Springfield," but
+fitted with a globe sight and hair-trigger--would easily send its ounce
+and a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. That would probably not
+affect the duration and result of the war, but it is the business of a
+soldier to kill. It is also his habit if he is a good soldier. Searing
+cocked his rifle and "set" the trigger.
+
+But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was
+not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the
+Confederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events
+had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some
+parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the
+acts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of the pattern.
+Some twenty-five years previously the Power charged with the execution
+of the work according to the design had provided against that mischance
+by causing the birth of a certain male child in a little village at the
+foot of the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully reared it, supervised
+its education, directed its desires into a military channel, and in due
+time made it an officer of artillery. By the concurrence of an infinite
+number of favoring influences and their preponderance over an infinite
+number of opposing ones, this officer of artillery had been made to
+commit a breach of discipline and flee from his native country to avoid
+punishment. He had been directed to New Orleans (instead of New York),
+where a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. He was enlisted and
+promoted, and things were so ordered that he now commanded a Confederate
+battery some two miles along the line from where Jerome Searing, the
+Federal scout, stood cocking his rifle. Nothing had been neglected--at
+every step in the progress of both these men's lives, and in the lives
+of their contemporaries and ancestors, and in the lives of the
+contemporaries of their ancestors, the right thing had been done to
+bring about the desired result. Had anything in all this vast
+concatenation been overlooked Private Searing might have fired on the
+retreating Confederates that morning, and would perhaps have missed. As
+it fell out, a Confederate captain of artillery, having nothing better
+to do while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off, amused himself by
+sighting a field-piece obliquely to his right at what he mistook for
+some Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and discharged it. The
+shot flew high of its mark.
+
+As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his rifle and with his eyes
+upon the distant Confederates considered where he could plant his shot
+with the best hope of making a widow or an orphan or a childless
+mother,--perhaps all three, for Private Searing, although he had
+repeatedly refused promotion, was not without a certain kind of
+ambition,--he heard a rushing sound in the air, like that made by the
+wings of a great bird swooping down upon its prey. More quickly than he
+could apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horrible
+roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, striking
+with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion of
+timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringing down the
+crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust!
+
+When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness he did not at once
+understand what had occurred. It was, indeed, some time before he opened
+his eyes. For a while he believed that he had died and been buried, and
+he tried to recall some portions of the burial service. He thought that
+his wife was kneeling upon his grave, adding her weight to that of the
+earth upon his breast. The two of them, widow and earth, had crushed his
+coffin. Unless the children should persuade her to go home he would not
+much longer be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. "I cannot
+speak to her," he thought; "the dead have no voice; and if I open my
+eyes I shall get them full of earth."
+
+He opened his eyes. A great expanse of blue sky, rising from a fringe of
+the tops of trees. In the foreground, shutting out some of the trees, a
+high, dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an intricate,
+patternless system of straight lines; the whole an immeasurable distance
+away--a distance so inconceivably great that it fatigued him, and he
+closed his eyes. The moment that he did so he was conscious of an
+insufferable light. A sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmic
+thunder of a distant sea breaking in successive waves upon the beach,
+and out of this noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly coming from
+beyond it, and intermingled with its ceaseless undertone, came the
+articulate words: "Jerome Searing, you are caught like a rat in a trap--
+in a trap, trap, trap."
+
+Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black darkness, an infinite
+tranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood,
+and well assured of the trap that he was in, remembering all and nowise
+alarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength of
+his enemy, to plan his defense.
+
+He was caught in a reclining posture, his back firmly supported by a
+solid beam. Another lay across his breast, but he had been able to
+shrink a little away from it so that it no longer oppressed him, though
+it was immovable. A brace joining it at an angle had wedged him against
+a pile of boards on his left, fastening the arm on that side. His legs,
+slightly parted and straight along the ground, were covered upward to
+the knees with a mass of debris which towered above his narrow horizon.
+His head was as rigidly fixed as in a vise; he could move his eyes, his
+chin--no more. Only his right arm was partly free. "You must help us out
+of this," he said to it. But he could not get it from under the heavy
+timber athwart his chest, nor move it outward more than six inches at
+the elbow.
+
+Searing was not seriously injured, nor did he suffer pain. A smart rap
+on the head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurred
+simultaneously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system,
+had momentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including the
+period of recovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, had
+probably not exceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not
+wholly cleared away as he began an intelligent survey of the situation.
+
+With his partly free right hand he now tried to get hold of the beam
+that lay across, but not quite against, his breast. In no way could he
+do so. He was unable to depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow
+beyond that edge of the timber which was nearest his knees; failing in
+that, he could not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the beam. The
+brace that made an angle with it downward and backward prevented him
+from doing anything in that direction, and between it and his body the
+space was not half so wide as the length of his forearm. Obviously he
+could not get his hand under the beam nor over it; the hand could not,
+in fact, touch it at all. Having demonstrated his inability, he
+desisted, and began to think whether he could reach any of the debris
+piled upon his legs.
+
+In surveying the mass with a view to determining that point, his
+attention was arrested by what seemed to be a ring of shining metal
+immediately in front of his eyes. It appeared to him at first to
+surround some perfectly black substance, and it was somewhat more than a
+half-inch in diameter. It suddenly occurred to his mind that the
+blackness was simply shadow and that the ring was in fact the muzzle of
+his rifle protruding from the pile of debris. He was not long in
+satisfying himself that this was so--if it was a satisfaction. By
+closing either eye he could look a little way along the barrel--to the
+point where it was hidden by the rubbish that held it. He could see the
+one side, with the corresponding eye, at apparently the same angle as
+the other side with the other eye. Looking with the right eye, the
+weapon seemed to be directed at a point to the left of his head, and
+_vice-versa._ He was unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, but
+could see the under surface of the stock at a slight angle. The piece
+was, in fact, aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.
+
+In the perception of this circumstance, in the recollection that just
+previously to the mischance of which this uncomfortable situation was
+the result he had cocked the rifle and set the trigger so that a touch
+would discharge it, Private Searing was affected with a feeling of
+uneasiness. But that was as far as possible from fear; he was a brave
+man, somewhat familiar with the aspect of rifles from that point of
+view, and of cannon too. And now he recalled, with something like
+amusement, an incident of his experience at the storming of Missionary
+Ridge, where, walking up to one of the enemy's embrasures from which he
+had seen a heavy gun throw charge after charge of grape among the
+assailants he had thought for a moment that the piece had been
+withdrawn; he could see nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. What
+that was he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitched
+another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is one
+of the commonest incidents in a soldier's life--firearms, too, with
+malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for.
+Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, and
+turned away his eyes.
+
+After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time he made an
+ineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage his
+head, the fixity of which was the more annoying from his ignorance of
+what held it. Next he tried to free his feet, but while exerting the
+powerful muscles of his legs for that purpose it occurred to him that a
+disturbance of the rubbish which held them might discharge the rifle;
+how it could have endured what had already befallen it he could not
+understand, although memory assisted him with several instances in
+point. One in particular he recalled, in which in a moment of mental
+abstraction he had clubbed his rifle and beaten out another gentleman's
+brains, observing afterward that the weapon which he had been diligently
+swinging by the muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock--knowledge
+of which circumstance would doubtless have cheered his antagonist to
+longer endurance. He had always smiled in recalling that blunder of his
+"green and salad days" as a soldier, but now he did not smile. He turned
+his eyes again to the muzzle of the rifle and for a moment fancied that
+it had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer.
+
+Again he looked away. The tops of the distant trees beyond the bounds of
+the plantation interested him: he had not before observed how light and
+feathery they were, nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among their
+branches, where they somewhat paled it with their green; above him it
+appeared almost black. "It will be uncomfortably hot here," he thought,
+"as the day advances. I wonder which way I am looking."
+
+Judging by such shadows as he could see, he decided that his face was
+due north; he would at least not have the sun in his eyes, and north--
+well, that was toward his wife and children.
+
+"Bah!" he exclaimed aloud, "what have they to do with it?"
+
+He closed his eyes. "As I can't get out I may as well go to sleep. The
+rebels are gone and some of our fellows are sure to stray out here
+foraging. They'll find me."
+
+But he did not sleep. Gradually he became sensible of a pain in his
+forehead--a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more and
+more uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone--closed them and
+it returned. "The devil!" he said, irrelevantly, and stared again at the
+sky. He heard the singing of birds, the strange metallic note of the
+meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He fell into
+pleasant memories of his childhood, played again with his brother and
+sister, raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks,
+entered the sombre forest beyond and with timid steps followed the faint
+path to Ghost Rock, standing at last with audible heart-throbs before
+the Dead Man's Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mystery. For the
+first time he observed that the opening of the haunted cavern was
+encircled by a ring of metal. Then all else vanished and left him gazing
+into the barrel of his rifle as before. But whereas before it had seemed
+nearer, it now seemed an inconceivable distance away, and all the more
+sinister for that. He cried out and, startled by something in his own
+voice--the note of fear--lied to himself in denial: "If I don't sing out
+I may stay here till I die."
+
+He now made no further attempt to evade the menacing stare of the gun
+barrel. If he turned away his eyes an instant it was to look for
+assistance (although he could not see the ground on either side the
+ruin), and he permitted them to return, obedient to the imperative
+fascination. If he closed them it was from weariness, and instantly the
+poignant pain in his forehead--the prophecy and menace of the bullet--
+forced him to reopen them.
+
+The tension of nerve and brain was too severe; nature came to his relief
+with intervals of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of these he became
+sensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he worked
+his fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel that
+they were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew the
+sensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it
+against the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full of
+splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a
+plain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he could
+not die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there had
+been some one to hear them, but he could die "game," and he would. But
+if he could only know when to expect the shot!
+
+Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking and
+scampering about. One of them mounted the pile of debris that held the
+rifle; another followed and another. Searing regarded them at first with
+indifference, then with friendly interest; then, as the thought flashed
+into his bewildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle,
+he cursed them and ordered them to go away. "It is no business of
+yours," he cried.
+
+The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnaw
+away his nose, cut his throat--he knew that, but he hoped by that time
+to be dead.
+
+Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with its
+black interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and incessant. He
+felt it gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until at
+last its progress was arrested by the wood at the back of his head. It
+grew momentarily more insufferable: he began wantonly beating his
+lacerated hand against the splinters again to counteract that horrible
+ache. It seemed to throb with a slow, regular recurrence, each pulsation
+sharper than the preceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt
+the fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country,
+of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passed
+away--not a vestige remained. Here in this confusion of timbers and
+boards is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time--each pain an
+everlasting life. The throbs tick off eternities.
+
+Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the formidable enemy, the strong,
+resolute warrior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was fallen; his eyes
+protruded; he trembled in every fibre; a cold sweat bathed his entire
+body; he screamed with fear. He was not insane--he was terrified.
+
+In groping about with his torn and bleeding hand he seized at last a
+strip of board, and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel with his
+body, and by bending his elbow as much as the contracted space would
+permit, he could draw it a few inches at a time. Finally it was
+altogether loosened from the wreckage covering his legs; he could lift
+it clear of the ground its whole length. A great hope came into his
+mind: perhaps he could work it upward, that is to say backward, far
+enough to lift the end and push aside the rifle; or, if that were too
+tightly wedged, so place the strip of board as to deflect the bullet.
+With this object he passed it backward inch by inch, hardly daring to
+breathe lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and more than ever
+unable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which might perhaps now hasten
+to improve its waning opportunity. Something at least had been gained:
+in the occupation of his mind in this attempt at self-defense he was
+less sensible of the pain in his head and had ceased to wince. But he
+was still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled like castanets.
+
+The strip of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tugged
+at it with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all he
+could, but it had met some extended obstruction behind him and the end
+in front was still too far away to clear the pile of debris and reach
+the muzzle of the gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the trigger
+guard, which, uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see with
+his right eye. He tried to break the strip with his hand, but had no
+leverage. In his defeat, all his terror returned, augmented tenfold. The
+black aperture of the rifle appeared to threaten a sharper and more
+imminent death in punishment of his rebellion. The track of the bullet
+through his head ached with an intenser anguish. He began to tremble
+again.
+
+Suddenly he became composed. His tremor subsided. He clenched his teeth
+and drew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defense; a
+new design had shaped itself in his mind--another plan of battle.
+Raising the front end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed it
+forward through the wreckage at the side of the rifle until it pressed
+against the trigger guard. Then he moved the end slowly outward until he
+could feel that it had cleared it, then, closing his eyes, thrust it
+against the trigger with all his strength! There was no explosion; the
+rifle had been discharged as it dropped from his hand when the building
+fell. But it did its work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket-guard on that part
+of the line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission,
+sat with attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not the
+faintest sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the barking of a
+squirrel, the noise of the wind among the pines--all were anxiously
+noted by his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly in front of his
+line, he heard a faint, confused rumble, like the clatter of a falling
+building translated by distance. The lieutenant mechanically looked at
+his watch. Six o'clock and eighteen minutes. At the same moment an
+officer approached him on foot from the rear and saluted.
+
+"Lieutenant," said the officer, "the colonel directs you to move forward
+your line and feel the enemy if you find him. If not, continue the
+advance until directed to halt. There is reason to think that the enemy
+has retreated."
+
+The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; the other officer retired. In a
+moment the men, apprised of their duty by the non-commissioned officers
+in low tones, had deployed from their rifle-pits and were moving forward
+in skirmishing order, with set teeth and beating hearts.
+
+This line of skirmishers sweeps across the plantation toward the
+mountain. They pass on both sides of the wrecked building, observing
+nothing. At a short distance in their rear their commander comes. He
+casts his eyes curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body half buried
+in boards and timbers. It is so covered with dust that its clothing is
+Confederate gray. Its face is yellowish white; the cheeks are fallen in,
+the temples sunken, too, with sharp ridges about them, making the
+forehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, slightly lifted, shows the
+white teeth, rigidly clenched. The hair is heavy with moisture, the face
+as wet as the dewy grass all about. From his point of view the officer
+does not observe the rifle; the man was apparently killed by the fall of
+the building.
+
+"Dead a week," said the officer curtly, moving on and absently pulling
+out his watch as if to verify his estimate of time. Six o'clock and
+forty minutes.
+
+
+
+
+KILLED AT RESACA
+
+The best soldier of our staff was Lieutenant Herman Brayle, one of the
+two aides-de-camp. I don't remember where the general picked him up;
+from some Ohio regiment, I think; none of us had previously known him,
+and it would have been strange if we had, for no two of us came from the
+same State, nor even from adjoining States. The general seemed to think
+that a position on his staff was a distinction that should be so
+judiciously conferred as not to beget any sectional jealousies and
+imperil the integrity of that part of the country which was still an
+integer. He would not even choose officers from his own command, but by
+some jugglery at department headquarters obtained them from other
+brigades. Under such circumstances, a man's services had to be very
+distinguished indeed to be heard of by his family and the friends of his
+youth; and "the speaking trump of fame" was a trifle hoarse from
+loquacity, anyhow.
+
+Lieutenant Brayle was more than six feet in height and of splendid
+proportions, with the light hair and gray-blue eyes which men so gifted
+usually find associated with a high order of courage. As he was commonly
+in full uniform, especially in action, when most officers are content to
+be less flamboyantly attired, he was a very striking and conspicuous
+figure. As to the rest, he had a gentleman's manners, a scholar's head,
+and a lion's heart. His age was about thirty.
+
+We all soon came to like Brayle as much as we admired him, and it was
+with sincere concern that in the engagement at Stone's River--our first
+action after he joined us--we observed that he had one most
+objectionable and unsoldierly quality: he was vain of his courage.
+During all the vicissitudes and mutations of that hideous encounter,
+whether our troops were fighting in the open cotton fields, in the cedar
+thickets, or behind the railway embankment, he did not once take cover,
+except when sternly commanded to do so by the general, who usually had
+other things to think of than the lives of his staff officers--or those
+of his men, for that matter.
+
+In every later engagement while Brayle was with us it was the same way.
+He would sit his horse like an equestrian statue, in a storm of bullets
+and grape, in the most exposed places--wherever, in fact, duty,
+requiring him to go, permitted him to remain--when, without trouble and
+with distinct advantage to his reputation for common sense, he might
+have been in such security as is possible on a battlefield in the brief
+intervals of personal inaction.
+
+On foot, from necessity or in deference to his dismounted commander or
+associates, his conduct was the same. He would stand like a rock in the
+open when officers and men alike had taken to cover; while men older in
+service and years, higher in rank and of unquestionable intrepidity,
+were loyally preserving behind the crest of a hill lives infinitely
+precious to their country, this fellow would stand, equally idle, on the
+ridge, facing in the direction of the sharpest fire.
+
+When battles are going on in open ground it frequently occurs that the
+opposing lines, confronting each other within a stone's throw for hours,
+hug the earth as closely as if they loved it. The line officers in their
+proper places flatten themselves no less, and the field officers, their
+horses all killed or sent to the rear, crouch beneath the infernal
+canopy of hissing lead and screaming iron without a thought of personal
+dignity.
+
+In such circumstances the life of a staff officer of a brigade is
+distinctly "not a happy one," mainly because of its precarious tenure
+and the unnerving alternations of emotion to which he is exposed. From a
+position of that comparative security from which a civilian would
+ascribe his escape to a "miracle," he may be despatched with an order to
+some commander of a prone regiment in the front line--a person for the
+moment inconspicuous and not always easy to find without a deal of
+search among men somewhat preoccupied, and in a din in which question
+and answer alike must be imparted in the sign language. It is customary
+in such cases to duck the head and scuttle away on a keen run, an object
+of lively interest to some thousands of admiring marksmen. In returning
+--well, it is not customary to return.
+
+Brayle's practice was different. He would consign his horse to the care
+of an orderly,--he loved his horse,--and walk quietly away on his
+perilous errand with never a stoop of the back, his splendid figure,
+accentuated by his uniform, holding the eye with a strange fascination.
+We watched him with suspended breath, our hearts in our mouths. On one
+occasion of this kind, indeed, one of our number, an impetuous
+stammerer, was so possessed by his emotion that he shouted at me:
+
+"I'll b-b-bet you t-two d-d-dollars they d-drop him b-b-before he g-gets
+to that d-d-ditch!"
+
+I did not accept the brutal wager; I thought they would.
+
+Let me do justice to a brave man's memory; in all these needless
+exposures of life there was no visible bravado nor subsequent narration.
+In the few instances when some of us had ventured to remonstrate, Brayle
+had smiled pleasantly and made some light reply, which, however, had not
+encouraged a further pursuit of the subject. Once he said:
+
+"Captain, if ever I come to grief by forgetting your advice, I hope my
+last moments will be cheered by the sound of your beloved voice
+breathing into my ear the blessed words, 'I told you so.'"
+
+We laughed at the captain--just why we could probably not have
+explained--and that afternoon when he was shot to rags from an ambuscade
+Brayle remained by the body for some time, adjusting the limbs with
+needless care--there in the middle of a road swept by gusts of grape and
+canister! It is easy to condemn this kind of thing, and not very
+difficult to refrain from imitation, but it is impossible not to
+respect, and Brayle was liked none the less for the weakness which had
+so heroic an expression. We wished he were not a fool, but he went on
+that way to the end, sometimes hard hit, but always returning to duty
+about as good as new.
+
+Of course, it came at last; he who ignores the law of probabilities
+challenges an adversary that is seldom beaten. It was at Resaca, in
+Georgia, during the movement that resulted in the taking of Atlanta. In
+front of our brigade the enemy's line of earthworks ran through open
+fields along a slight crest. At each end of this open ground we were
+close up to him in the woods, but the clear ground we could not hope to
+occupy until night, when darkness would enable us to burrow like moles
+and throw up earth. At this point our line was a quarter-mile away in
+the edge of a wood. Roughly, we formed a semicircle, the enemy's
+fortified line being the chord of the arc.
+
+"Lieutenant, go tell Colonel Ward to work up as close as he can get
+cover, and not to waste much ammunition in unnecessary firing. You may
+leave your horse."
+
+When the general gave this direction we were in the fringe of the
+forest, near the right extremity of the arc. Colonel Ward was at the
+left. The suggestion to leave the horse obviously enough meant that
+Brayle was to take the longer line, through the woods and among the men.
+Indeed, the suggestion was needless; to go by the short route meant
+absolutely certain failure to deliver the message. Before anybody could
+interpose, Brayle had cantered lightly into the field and the enemy's
+works were in crackling conflagration.
+
+"Stop that damned fool!" shouted the general.
+
+A private of the escort, with more ambition than brains, spurred forward
+to obey, and within ten yards left himself and his horse dead on the
+field of honor.
+
+Brayle was beyond recall, galloping easily along, parallel to the enemy
+and less than two hundred yards distant. He was a picture to see! His
+hat had been blown or shot from his head, and his long, blond hair rose
+and fell with the motion of his horse. He sat erect in the saddle,
+holding the reins lightly in his left hand, his right hanging carelessly
+at his side. An occasional glimpse of his handsome profile as he turned
+his head one way or the other proved that the interest which he took in
+what was going on was natural and without affectation.
+
+The picture was intensely dramatic, but in no degree theatrical.
+Successive scores of rifles spat at him viciously as he came within
+range, and our own line in the edge of the timber broke out in visible
+and audible defense. No longer regardful of themselves or their orders,
+our fellows sprang to their feet, and swarming into the open sent broad
+sheets of bullets against the blazing crest of the offending works,
+which poured an answering fire into their unprotected groups with deadly
+effect. The artillery on both sides joined the battle, punctuating the
+rattle and roar with deep, earth-shaking explosions and tearing the air
+with storms of screaming grape, which from the enemy's side splintered
+the trees and spattered them with blood, and from ours defiled the smoke
+of his arms with banks and clouds of dust from his parapet.
+
+My attention had been for a moment drawn to the general combat, but now,
+glancing down the unobscured avenue between these two thunderclouds, I
+saw Brayle, the cause of the carnage. Invisible now from either side,
+and equally doomed by friend and foe, he stood in the shot-swept space,
+motionless, his face toward the enemy. At some little distance lay his
+horse. I instantly saw what had stopped him.
+
+As topographical engineer I had, early in the day, made a hasty
+examination of the ground, and now remembered that at that point was a
+deep and sinuous gully, crossing half the field from the enemy's line,
+its general course at right angles to it. From where we now were it was
+invisible, and Brayle had evidently not known about it. Clearly, it was
+impassable. Its salient angles would have afforded him absolute security
+if he had chosen to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought in his
+favor and leapt into it. He could not go forward, he would not turn
+back; he stood awaiting death. It did not keep him long waiting.
+
+By some mysterious coincidence, almost instantaneously as he fell, the
+firing ceased, a few desultory shots at long intervals serving rather to
+accentuate than break the silence. It was as if both sides had suddenly
+repented of their profitless crime. Four stretcher-bearers of ours,
+following a sergeant with a white flag, soon afterward moved unmolested
+into the field, and made straight for Brayle's body. Several Confederate
+officers and men came out to meet them, and with uncovered heads
+assisted them to take up their sacred burden. As it was borne toward us
+we heard beyond the hostile works fifes and a muffled drum--a dirge. A
+generous enemy honored the fallen brave.
+
+Amongst the dead man's effects was a soiled Russia-leather pocketbook.
+In the distribution of mementoes of our friend, which the general, as
+administrator, decreed, this fell to me.
+
+A year after the close of the war, on my way to California, I opened and
+idly inspected it. Out of an overlooked compartment fell a letter
+without envelope or address. It was in a woman's handwriting, and began
+with words of endearment, but no name.
+
+It had the following date line: "San Francisco, Cal., July 9, 1862." The
+signature was "Darling," in marks of quotation. Incidentally, in the
+body of the text, the writer's full name was given--Marian Mendenhall.
+
+The letter showed evidence of cultivation and good breeding, but it was
+an ordinary love letter, if a love letter can be ordinary. There was not
+much in it, but there was something. It was this:
+
+"Mr. Winters, whom I shall always hate for it, has been telling that at
+some battle in Virginia, where he got his hurt, you were seen crouching
+behind a tree. I think he wants to injure you in my regard, which he
+knows the story would do if I believed it. I could bear to hear of my
+soldier lover's death, but not of his cowardice."
+
+These were the words which on that sunny afternoon, in a distant region,
+had slain a hundred men. Is woman weak?
+
+One evening I called on Miss Mendenhall to return the letter to her. I
+intended, also, to tell her what she had done--but not that she did it.
+I found her in a handsome dwelling on Rincon Hill. She was beautiful,
+well bred--in a word, charming.
+
+"You knew Lieutenant Herman Brayle," I said, rather abruptly. "You know,
+doubtless, that he fell in battle. Among his effects was found this
+letter from you. My errand here is to place it in your hands."
+
+She mechanically took the letter, glanced through it with deepening
+color, and then, looking at me with a smile, said:
+
+"It is very good of you, though I am sure it was hardly worth while."
+She started suddenly and changed color. "This stain," she said, "is it--
+surely it is not--"
+
+"Madam," I said, "pardon me, but that is the blood of the truest and
+bravest heart that ever beat."
+
+She hastily flung the letter on the blazing coals. "Uh! I cannot bear
+the sight of blood!" she said. "How did he die?"
+
+I had involuntarily risen to rescue that scrap of paper, sacred even to
+me, and now stood partly behind her. As she asked the question she
+turned her face about and slightly upward. The light of the burning
+letter was reflected in her eyes and touched her cheek with a tinge of
+crimson like the stain upon its page. I had never seen anything so
+beautiful as this detestable creature.
+
+"He was bitten by a snake," I replied.
+
+
+
+
+THE AFFAIR AT COULTER'S NOTCH
+
+"Do you think, Colonel, that your brave Coulter would like to put one of
+his guns in here?" the general asked.
+
+He was apparently not altogether serious; it certainly did not seem a
+place where any artillerist, however brave, would like to put a gun. The
+colonel thought that possibly his division commander meant
+good-humoredly to intimate that in a recent conversation between them
+Captain Coulter's courage had been too highly extolled.
+
+"General," he replied warmly, "Coulter would like to put a gun anywhere
+within reach of those people," with a motion of his hand in the
+direction of the enemy.
+
+"It is the only place," said the general. He was serious, then.
+
+The place was a depression, a "notch," in the sharp crest of a hill. It
+was a pass, and through it ran a turnpike, which reaching this highest
+point in its course by a sinuous ascent through a thin forest made a
+similar, though less steep, descent toward the enemy. For a mile to the
+left and a mile to the right, the ridge, though occupied by Federal
+infantry lying close behind the sharp crest and appearing as if held in
+place by atmospheric pressure, was inaccessible to artillery. There was
+no place but the bottom of the notch, and that was barely wide enough
+for the roadbed. From the Confederate side this point was commanded by
+two batteries posted on a slightly lower elevation beyond a creek, and a
+half-mile away. All the guns but one were masked by the trees of an
+orchard; that one--it seemed a bit of impudence--was on an open lawn
+directly in front of a rather grandiose building, the planter's
+dwelling. The gun was safe enough in its exposure--but only because the
+Federal infantry had been forbidden to fire. Coulter's Notch--it came to
+be called so--was not, that pleasant summer afternoon, a place where one
+would "like to put a gun."
+
+Three or four dead horses lay there sprawling in the road, three or four
+dead men in a trim row at one side of it, and a little back, down the
+hill. All but one were cavalrymen belonging to the Federal advance. One
+was a quartermaster. The general commanding the division and the colonel
+commanding the brigade, with their staffs and escorts, had ridden into
+the notch to have a look at the enemy's guns--which had straightway
+obscured themselves in towering clouds of smoke. It was hardly
+profitable to be curious about guns which had the trick of the
+cuttle-fish, and the season of observation had been brief. At its
+conclusion--a short remove backward from where it began--occurred the
+conversation already partly reported. "It is the only place," the
+general repeated thoughtfully, "to get at them."
+
+The colonel looked at him gravely. "There is room for only one gun,
+General--one against twelve."
+
+"That is true--for only one at a time," said the commander with
+something like, yet not altogether like, a smile. "But then, your brave
+Coulter--a whole battery in himself."
+
+The tone of irony was now unmistakable. It angered the colonel, but he
+did not know what to say. The spirit of military subordination is not
+favorable to retort, nor even to deprecation.
+
+At this moment a young officer of artillery came riding slowly up the
+road attended by his bugler. It was Captain Coulter. He could not have
+been more than twenty-three years of age. He was of medium height, but
+very slender and lithe, and sat his horse with something of the air of a
+civilian. In face he was of a type singularly unlike the men about him;
+thin, high-nosed, gray-eyed, with a slight blond mustache, and long,
+rather straggling hair of the same color. There was an apparent
+negligence in his attire. His cap was worn with the visor a trifle
+askew; his coat was buttoned only at the sword-belt, showing a
+considerable expanse of white shirt, tolerably clean for that stage of
+the campaign. But the negligence was all in his dress and bearing; in
+his face was a look of intense interest in his surroundings. His gray
+eyes, which seemed occasionally to strike right and left across the
+landscape, like search-lights, were for the most part fixed upon the sky
+beyond the Notch; until he should arrive at the summit of the road there
+was nothing else in that direction to see. As he came opposite his
+division and brigade commanders at the road-side he saluted mechanically
+and was about to pass on. The colonel signed to him to halt.
+
+"Captain Coulter," he said, "the enemy has twelve pieces over there on
+the next ridge. If I rightly understand the general, he directs that you
+bring up a gun and engage them."
+
+There was a blank silence; the general looked stolidly at a distant
+regiment swarming slowly up the hill through rough undergrowth, like a
+torn and draggled cloud of blue smoke; the captain appeared not to have
+observed him. Presently the captain spoke, slowly and with apparent
+effort:
+
+"On the next ridge, did you say, sir? Are the guns near the house?"
+
+"Ah, you have been over this road before. Directly at the house."
+
+"And it is--necessary--to engage them? The order is imperative?"
+
+His voice was husky and broken. He was visibly paler. The colonel was
+astonished and mortified. He stole a glance at the commander. In that
+set, immobile face was no sign; it was as hard as bronze. A moment later
+the general rode away, followed by his staff and escort. The colonel,
+humiliated and indignant, was about to order Captain Coulter in arrest,
+when the latter spoke a few words in a low tone to his bugler, saluted,
+and rode straight forward into the Notch, where, presently, at the
+summit of the road, his field-glass at his eyes, he showed against the
+sky, he and his horse, sharply defined and statuesque. The bugler had
+dashed down the speed and disappeared behind a wood. Presently his bugle
+was heard singing in the cedars, and in an incredibly short time a
+single gun with its caisson, each drawn by six horses and manned by its
+full complement of gunners, came bounding and banging up the grade in a
+storm of dust, unlimbered under cover, and was run forward by hand to
+the fatal crest among the dead horses. A gesture of the captain's arm,
+some strangely agile movements of the men in loading, and almost before
+the troops along the way had ceased to hear the rattle of the wheels, a
+great white cloud sprang forward down the slope, and with a deafening
+report the affair at Coulter's Notch had begun.
+
+It is not intended to relate in detail the progress and incidents of
+that ghastly contest--a contest without vicissitudes, its alternations
+only different degrees of despair. Almost at the instant when Captain
+Coulter's gun blew its challenging cloud twelve answering clouds rolled
+upward from among the trees about the plantation house, a deep multiple
+report roared back like a broken echo, and thenceforth to the end the
+Federal cannoneers fought their hopeless battle in an atmosphere of
+living iron whose thoughts were lightnings and whose deeds were death.
+
+Unwilling to see the efforts which he could not aid and the slaughter
+which he could not stay, the colonel ascended the ridge at a point a
+quarter of a mile to the left, whence the Notch, itself invisible, but
+pushing up successive masses of smoke, seemed the crater of a volcano in
+thundering eruption. With his glass he watched the enemy's guns, noting
+as he could the effects of Coulter's fire--if Coulter still lived to
+direct it. He saw that the Federal gunners, ignoring those of the
+enemy's pieces whose positions could be determined by their smoke only,
+gave their whole attention to the one that maintained its place in the
+open--the lawn in front of the house. Over and about that hardy piece
+the shells exploded at intervals of a few seconds. Some exploded in the
+house, as could be seen by thin ascensions of smoke from the breached
+roof. Figures of prostrate men and horses were plainly visible.
+
+"If our fellows are doing so good work with a single gun," said the
+colonel to an aide who happened to be nearest, "they must be suffering
+like the devil from twelve. Go down and present the commander of that
+piece with my congratulations on the accuracy of his fire."
+
+Turning to his adjutant-general he said, "Did you observe Coulter's
+damned reluctance to obey orders?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I did."
+
+"Well, say nothing about it, please. I don't think the general will care
+to make any accusations. He will probably have enough to do in
+explaining his own connection with this uncommon way of amusing the
+rear-guard of a retreating enemy."
+
+A young officer approached from below, climbing breathless up the
+acclivity. Almost before he had saluted, he gasped out:
+
+"Colonel, I am directed by Colonel Harmon to say that the enemy's guns
+are within easy reach of our rifles, and most of them visible from
+several points along the ridge."
+
+The brigade commander looked at him without a trace of interest in his
+expression. "I know it," he said quietly.
+
+The young adjutant was visibly embarrassed. "Colonel Harmon would like
+to have permission to silence those guns," he stammered.
+
+"So should I," the colonel said in the same tone. "Present my
+compliments to Colonel Harmon and say to him that the general's orders
+for the infantry not to fire are still in force."
+
+The adjutant saluted and retired. The colonel ground his heel into the
+earth and turned to look again at the enemy's guns.
+
+"Colonel," said the adjutant-general, "I don't know that I ought to say
+anything, but there is something wrong in all this. Do you happen to
+know that Captain Coulter is from the South?"
+
+"No; _was_ he, indeed?"
+
+"I heard that last summer the division which the general then commanded
+was in the vicinity of Coulter's home--camped there for weeks, and--"
+
+"Listen!" said the colonel, interrupting with an upward gesture. "Do you
+hear _that_?"
+
+"That" was the silence of the Federal gun. The staff, the orderlies, the
+lines of infantry behind the crest--all had "heard," and were looking
+curiously in the direction of the crater, whence no smoke now ascended
+except desultory cloudlets from the enemy's shells. Then came the blare
+of a bugle, a faint rattle of wheels; a minute later the sharp reports
+recommenced with double activity. The demolished gun had been replaced
+with a sound one.
+
+"Yes," said the adjutant-general, resuming his narrative, "the general
+made the acquaintance of Coulter's family. There was trouble--I don't
+know the exact nature of it--something about Coulter's wife. She is a
+red-hot Secessionist, as they all are, except Coulter himself, but she
+is a good wife and high-bred lady. There was a complaint to army
+headquarters. The general was transferred to this division. It is odd
+that Coulter's battery should afterward have been assigned to it."
+
+The colonel had risen from the rock upon which they had been sitting.
+His eyes were blazing with a generous indignation.
+
+"See here, Morrison," said he, looking his gossiping staff officer
+straight in the face, "did you get that story from a gentleman or a
+liar?"
+
+"I don't want to say how I got it, Colonel, unless it is necessary"--he
+was blushing a trifle--"but I'll stake my life upon its truth in the
+main."
+
+The colonel turned toward a small knot of officers some distance away.
+"Lieutenant Williams!" he shouted.
+
+One of the officers detached himself from the group and coming forward
+saluted, saying: "Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you had been informed.
+Williams is dead down there by the gun. What can I do, sir?"
+
+Lieutenant Williams was the aide who had had the pleasure of conveying
+to the officer in charge of the gun his brigade commander's
+congratulations.
+
+"Go," said the colonel, "and direct the withdrawal of that gun
+instantly. No--I'll go myself."
+
+He strode down the declivity toward the rear of the Notch at a
+break-neck pace, over rocks and through brambles, followed by his little
+retinue in tumultuous disorder. At the foot of the declivity they
+mounted their waiting animals and took to the road at a lively trot,
+round a bend and into the Notch. The spectacle which they encountered
+there was appalling!
+
+Within that defile, barely broad enough for a single gun, were piled the
+wrecks of no fewer than four. They had noted the silencing of only the
+last one disabled--there had been a lack of men to replace it quickly
+with another. The debris lay on both sides of the road; the men had
+managed to keep an open way between, through which the fifth piece was
+now firing. The men?--they looked like demons of the pit! All were
+hatless, all stripped to the waist, their reeking skins black with
+blotches of powder and spattered with gouts of blood. They worked like
+madmen, with rammer and cartridge, lever and lanyard. They set their
+swollen shoulders and bleeding hands against the wheels at each recoil
+and heaved the heavy gun back to its place. There were no commands; in
+that awful environment of whooping shot, exploding shells, shrieking
+fragments of iron, and flying splinters of wood, none could have been
+heard. Officers, if officers there were, were indistinguishable; all
+worked together--each while he lasted--governed by the eye. When the gun
+was sponged, it was loaded; when loaded, aimed and fired. The colonel
+observed something new to his military experience--something horrible
+and unnatural: the gun was bleeding at the mouth! In temporary default
+of water, the man sponging had dipped his sponge into a pool of
+comrade's blood. In all this work there was no clashing; the duty of the
+instant was obvious. When one fell, another, looking a trifle cleaner,
+seemed to rise from the earth in the dead man's tracks, to fall in his
+turn.
+
+With the ruined guns lay the ruined men--alongside the wreckage, under
+it and atop of it; and back down the road--a ghastly procession!--crept
+on hands and knees such of the wounded as were able to move. The
+colonel--he had compassionately sent his cavalcade to the right about--
+had to ride over those who were entirely dead in order not to crush
+those who were partly alive. Into that hell he tranquilly held his way,
+rode up alongside the gun, and, in the obscurity of the last discharge,
+tapped upon the cheek the man holding the rammer--who straightway fell,
+thinking himself killed. A fiend seven times damned sprang out of the
+smoke to take his place, but paused and gazed up at the mounted officer
+with an unearthly regard, his teeth flashing between his black lips, his
+eyes, fierce and expanded, burning like coals beneath his bloody brow.
+The colonel made an authoritative gesture and pointed to the rear. The
+fiend bowed in token of obedience. It was Captain Coulter.
+
+Simultaneously with the colonel's arresting sign, silence fell upon the
+whole field of action. The procession of missiles no longer streamed
+into that defile of death, for the enemy also had ceased firing. His
+army had been gone for hours, and the commander of his rear-guard, who
+had held his position perilously long in hope to silence the Federal
+fire, at that strange moment had silenced his own. "I was not aware of
+the breadth of my authority," said the colonel to anybody, riding
+forward to the crest to see what had really happened. An hour later his
+brigade was in bivouac on the enemy's ground, and its idlers were
+examining, with something of awe, as the faithful inspect a saint's
+relics, a score of straddling dead horses and three disabled guns, all
+spiked. The fallen men had been carried away; their torn and broken
+bodies would have given too great satisfaction.
+
+Naturally, the colonel established himself and his military family in
+the plantation house. It was somewhat shattered, but it was better than
+the open air. The furniture was greatly deranged and broken. Walls and
+ceilings were knocked away here and there, and a lingering odor of
+powder smoke was everywhere. The beds, the closets of women's clothing,
+the cupboards were not greatly damaged. The new tenants for a night
+made themselves comfortable, and the virtual effacement of Coulter's
+battery supplied them with an interesting topic.
+
+During supper an orderly of the escort showed himself into the
+dining-room and asked permission to speak to the colonel.
+
+"What is it, Barbour?" said that officer pleasantly, having overheard
+the request.
+
+"Colonel, there is something wrong in the cellar; I don't know what--
+somebody there. I was down there rummaging about."
+
+"I will go down and see," said a staff officer, rising.
+
+"So will I," the colonel said; "let the others remain. Lead on,
+orderly."
+
+They took a candle from the table and descended the cellar stairs, the
+orderly in visible trepidation. The candle made but a feeble light, but
+presently, as they advanced, its narrow circle of illumination revealed
+a human figure seated on the ground against the black stone wall which
+they were skirting, its knees elevated, its head bowed sharply forward.
+The face, which should have been seen in profile, was invisible, for the
+man was bent so far forward that his long hair concealed it; and,
+strange to relate, the beard, of a much darker hue, fell in a great
+tangled mass and lay along the ground at his side. They involuntarily
+paused; then the colonel, taking the candle from the orderly's shaking
+hand, approached the man and attentively considered him. The long dark
+beard was the hair of a woman--dead. The dead woman clasped in her arms
+a dead babe. Both were clasped in the arms of the man, pressed against
+his breast, against his lips. There was blood in the hair of the woman;
+there was blood in the hair of the man. A yard away, near an irregular
+depression in the beaten earth which formed the cellar's floor--fresh
+excavation with a convex bit of iron, having jagged edges, visible in
+one of the sides--lay an infant's foot. The colonel held the light as
+high as he could. The floor of the room above was broken through, the
+splinters pointing at all angles downward. "This casemate is not
+bomb-proof," said the colonel gravely. It did not occur to him that his
+summing up of the matter had any levity in it.
+
+They stood about the group awhile in silence; the staff officer was
+thinking of his unfinished supper, the orderly of what might possibly be
+in one of the casks on the other side of the cellar. Suddenly the man
+whom they had thought dead raised his head and gazed tranquilly into
+their faces. His complexion was coal black; the cheeks were apparently
+tattooed in irregular sinuous lines from the eyes downward. The lips,
+too, were white, like those of a stage negro. There was blood upon his
+forehead.
+
+The staff officer drew back a pace, the orderly two paces.
+
+"What are you doing here, my man?" said the colonel, unmoved.
+
+"This house belongs to me, sir," was the reply, civilly delivered.
+
+"To you? Ah, I see! And these?"
+
+"My wife and child. I am Captain Coulter."
+
+
+
+
+THE COUP DE GRACE
+
+The fighting had been hard and continuous; that was attested by all the
+senses. The very taste of battle was in the air. All was now over; it
+remained only to succor the wounded and bury the dead--to "tidy up a
+bit," as the humorist of a burial squad put it. A good deal of "tidying
+up" was required. As far as one could see through the forests, among the
+splintered trees, lay wrecks of men and horses. Among them moved the
+stretcher-bearers, gathering and carrying away the few who showed signs
+of life. Most of the wounded had died of neglect while the right to
+minister to their wants was in dispute. It is an army regulation that
+the wounded must wait; the best way to care for them is to win the
+battle. It must be confessed that victory is a distinct advantage to a
+man requiring attention, but many do not live to avail themselves of it.
+
+The dead were collected in groups of a dozen or a score and laid side by
+side in rows while the trenches were dug to receive them.
+
+Some, found at too great a distance from these rallying points, were
+buried where they lay. There was little attempt at identification,
+though in most cases, the burial parties being detailed to glean the
+same ground which they had assisted to reap, the names of the victorious
+dead were known and listed. The enemy's fallen had to be content with
+counting. But of that they got enough: many of them were counted several
+times, and the total, as given afterward in the official report of the
+victorious commander, denoted rather a hope than a result.
+
+At some little distance from the spot where one of the burial parties
+had established its "bivouac of the dead," a man in the uniform of a
+Federal officer stood leaning against a tree. From his feet upward to
+his neck his attitude was that of weariness reposing; but he turned his
+head uneasily from side to side; his mind was apparently not at rest. He
+was perhaps uncertain in which direction to go; he was not likely to
+remain long where he was, for already the level rays of the setting sun
+straggled redly through the open spaces of the wood and the weary
+soldiers were quitting their task for the day. He would hardly make a
+night of it alone there among the dead.
+
+Nine men in ten whom you meet after a battle inquire the way to some
+fraction of the army--as if any one could know. Doubtless this officer
+was lost. After resting himself a moment he would presumably follow one
+of the retiring burial squads.
+
+When all were gone he walked straight away into the forest toward the
+red west, its light staining his face like blood. The air of confidence
+with which he now strode along showed that he was on familiar ground; he
+had recovered his bearings. The dead on his right and on his left were
+unregarded as he passed. An occasional low moan from some
+sorely-stricken wretch whom the relief-parties had not reached, and who
+would have to pass a comfortless night beneath the stars with his thirst
+to keep him company, was equally unheeded. What, indeed, could the
+officer have done, being no surgeon and having no water?
+
+At the head of a shallow ravine, a mere depression of the ground, lay a
+small group of bodies. He saw, and swerving suddenly from his course
+walked rapidly toward them. Scanning each one sharply as he passed, he
+stopped at last above one which lay at a slight remove from the others,
+near a clump of small trees. He looked at it narrowly. It seemed to
+stir. He stooped and laid his hand upon its face. It screamed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The officer was Captain Downing Madwell, of a Massachusetts regiment of
+infantry, a daring and intelligent soldier, an honorable man.
+
+In the regiment were two brothers named Halcrow--Caffal and Creede
+Halcrow. Caffal Halcrow was a sergeant in Captain Madwell's company, and
+these two men, the sergeant and the captain, were devoted friends. In so
+far as disparity of rank, difference in duties and considerations of
+military discipline would permit they were commonly together. They had,
+indeed, grown up together from childhood. A habit of the heart is not
+easily broken off. Caffal Halcrow had nothing military in his taste nor
+disposition, but the thought of separation from his friend was
+disagreeable; he enlisted in the company in which Madwell was
+second-lieutenant. Each had taken two steps upward in rank, but between
+the highest non-commissioned and the lowest commissioned officer the
+gulf is deep and wide and the old relation was maintained with
+difficulty and a difference.
+
+Creede Halcrow, the brother of Caffal, was the major of the regiment--a
+cynical, saturnine man, between whom and Captain Madwell there was a
+natural antipathy which circumstances had nourished and strengthened to
+an active animosity. But for the restraining influence of their mutual
+relation to Caffal these two patriots would doubtless have endeavored to
+deprive their country of each other's services.
+
+At the opening of the battle that morning the regiment was performing
+outpost duty a mile away from the main army. It was attacked and nearly
+surrounded in the forest, but stubbornly held its ground. During a lull
+in the fighting, Major Halcrow came to Captain Madwell. The two
+exchanged formal salutes, and the major said: "Captain, the colonel
+directs that you push your company to the head of this ravine and hold
+your place there until recalled. I need hardly apprise you of the
+dangerous character of the movement, but if you wish, you can, I
+suppose, turn over the command to your first-lieutenant. I was not,
+however, directed to authorize the substitution; it is merely a
+suggestion of my own, unofficially made."
+
+To this deadly insult Captain Madwell coolly replied:
+
+"Sir, I invite you to accompany the movement. A mounted officer would be
+a conspicuous mark, and I have long held the opinion that it would be
+better if you were dead."
+
+The art of repartee was cultivated in military circles as early as 1862.
+
+A half-hour later Captain Madwell's company was driven from its position
+at the head of the ravine, with a loss of one-third its number. Among
+the fallen was Sergeant Halcrow. The regiment was soon afterward forced
+back to the main line, and at the close of the battle was miles away.
+The captain was now standing at the side of his subordinate and friend.
+
+Sergeant Halcrow was mortally hurt. His clothing was deranged; it seemed
+to have been violently torn apart, exposing the abdomen. Some of the
+buttons of his jacket had been pulled off and lay on the ground beside
+him and fragments of his other garments were strewn about. His leather
+belt was parted and had apparently been dragged from beneath him as he
+lay. There had been no great effusion of blood. The only visible wound
+was a wide, ragged opening in the abdomen.
+
+It was defiled with earth and dead leaves. Protruding from it was a loop
+of small intestine. In all his experience Captain Madwell had not seen a
+wound like this. He could neither conjecture how it was made nor explain
+the attendant circumstances--the strangely torn clothing, the parted
+belt, the besmirching of the white skin. He knelt and made a closer
+examination. When he rose to his feet, he turned his eyes in different
+directions as if looking for an enemy. Fifty yards away, on the crest of
+a low, thinly wooded hill, he saw several dark objects moving about
+among the fallen men--a herd of swine. One stood with its back to him,
+its shoulders sharply elevated. Its forefeet were upon a human body, its
+head was depressed and invisible. The bristly ridge of its chine showed
+black against the red west. Captain Madwell drew away his eyes and fixed
+them again upon the thing which had been his friend.
+
+The man who had suffered these monstrous mutilations was alive. At
+intervals he moved his limbs; he moaned at every breath. He stared
+blankly into the face of his friend and if touched screamed. In his
+giant agony he had torn up the ground on which he lay; his clenched
+hands were full of leaves and twigs and earth. Articulate speech was
+beyond his power; it was impossible to know if he were sensible to
+anything but pain. The expression of his face was an appeal; his eyes
+were full of prayer. For what?
+
+There was no misreading that look; the captain had too frequently seen
+it in eyes of those whose lips had still the power to formulate it by an
+entreaty for death. Consciously or unconsciously, this writhing fragment
+of humanity, this type and example of acute sensation, this handiwork of
+man and beast, this humble, unheroic Prometheus, was imploring
+everything, all, the whole non-ego, for the boon of oblivion. To the
+earth and the sky alike, to the trees, to the man, to whatever took form
+in sense or consciousness, this incarnate suffering addressed that
+silent plea.
+
+For what, indeed? For that which we accord to even the meanest creature
+without sense to demand it, denying it only to the wretched of our own
+race: for the blessed release, the rite of uttermost compassion, the
+_coup de grace_.
+
+Captain Madwell spoke the name of his friend. He repeated it over and
+over without effect until emotion choked his utterance.
+
+His tears plashed upon the livid face beneath his own and blinded
+himself. He saw nothing but a blurred and moving object, but the moans
+were more distinct than ever, interrupted at briefer intervals by
+sharper shrieks. He turned away, struck his hand upon his forehead, and
+strode from the spot. The swine, catching sight of him, threw up their
+crimson muzzles, regarding him suspiciously a second, and then with a
+gruff, concerted grunt, raced away out of sight. A horse, its foreleg
+splintered by a cannon-shot, lifted its head sidewise from the ground
+and neighed piteously. Madwell stepped forward, drew his revolver and
+shot the poor beast between the eyes, narrowly observing its
+death-struggle, which, contrary to his expectation, was violent and
+long; but at last it lay still. The tense muscles of its lips, which had
+uncovered the teeth in a horrible grin, relaxed; the sharp, clean-cut
+profile took on a look of profound peace and rest.
+
+Along the distant, thinly wooded crest to westward the fringe of sunset
+fire had now nearly burned itself out. The light upon the trunks of the
+trees had faded to a tender gray; shadows were in their tops, like great
+dark birds aperch. Night was coming and there were miles of haunted
+forest between Captain Madwell and camp. Yet he stood there at the side
+of the dead animal, apparently lost to all sense of his surroundings.
+His eyes were bent upon the earth at his feet; his left hand hung
+loosely at his side, his right still held the pistol. Presently he
+lifted his face, turned it toward his dying friend and walked rapidly
+back to his side. He knelt upon one knee, cocked the weapon, placed the
+muzzle against the man's forehead, and turning away his eyes pulled the
+trigger. There was no report. He had used his last cartridge for the
+horse.
+
+The sufferer moaned and his lips moved convulsively. The froth that ran
+from them had a tinge of blood.
+
+Captain Madwell rose to his feet and drew his sword from the scabbard.
+He passed the fingers of his left hand along the edge from hilt to
+point. He held it out straight before him, as if to test his nerves.
+There was no visible tremor of the blade; the ray of bleak skylight that
+it reflected was steady and true. He stooped and with his left hand tore
+away the dying man's shirt, rose and placed the point of the sword just
+over the heart. This time he did not withdraw his eyes. Grasping the
+hilt with both hands, he thrust downward with all his strength and
+weight. The blade sank into the man's body--through his body into the
+earth; Captain Madwell came near falling forward upon his work. The
+dying man drew up his knees and at the same time threw his right arm
+across his breast and grasped the steel so tightly that the knuckles of
+the hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain effort to withdraw the
+blade the wound was enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running sinuously
+down into the deranged clothing. At that moment three men stepped
+silently forward from behind the clump of young trees which had
+concealed their approach. Two were hospital attendants and carried a
+stretcher.
+
+The third was Major Creede Halcrow.
+
+
+
+
+PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER
+
+"Prisoner, what is your name?"
+
+"As I am to lose it at daylight to-morrow morning it is hardly worth
+while concealing it. Parker Adderson."
+
+"Your rank?"
+
+"A somewhat humble one; commissioned officers are too precious to be
+risked in the perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant."
+
+"Of what regiment?"
+
+"You must excuse me; my answer might, for anything I know, give you an
+idea of whose forces are in your front. Such knowledge as that is what I
+came into your lines to obtain, not to impart."
+
+"You are not without wit."
+
+"If you have the patience to wait you will find me dull enough
+to-morrow."
+
+"How do you know that you are to die to-morrow morning?"
+
+"Among spies captured by night that is the custom. It is one of the nice
+observances of the profession."
+
+The general so far laid aside the dignity appropriate to a Confederate
+officer of high rank and wide renown as to smile. But no one in his
+power and out of his favor would have drawn any happy augury from that
+outward and visible sign of approval. It was neither genial nor
+infectious; it did not communicate itself to the other persons exposed
+to it--the caught spy who had provoked it and the armed guard who had
+brought him into the tent and now stood a little apart, watching his
+prisoner in the yellow candle-light. It was no part of that warrior's
+duty to smile; he had been detailed for another purpose. The
+conversation was resumed; it was in character a trial for a capital
+offense.
+
+"You admit, then, that you are a spy--that you came into my camp,
+disguised as you are in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, to obtain
+information secretly regarding the numbers and disposition of my
+troops."
+
+"Regarding, particularly, their numbers. Their disposition I already
+knew. It is morose."
+
+The general brightened again; the guard, with a severer sense of his
+responsibility, accentuated the austerity of his expression and stood a
+trifle more erect than before. Twirling his gray slouch hat round and
+round upon his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely survey of his
+surroundings. They were simple enough. The tent was a common "wall
+tent," about eight feet by ten in dimensions, lighted by a single tallow
+candle stuck into the haft of a bayonet, which was itself stuck into a
+pine table at which the general sat, now busily writing and apparently
+forgetful of his unwilling guest. An old rag carpet covered the earthen
+floor; an older leather trunk, a second chair and a roll of blankets
+were about all else that the tent contained; in General Clavering's
+command Confederate simplicity and penury of "pomp and circumstance" had
+attained their highest development. On a large nail driven into the tent
+pole at the entrance was suspended a sword-belt supporting a long sabre,
+a pistol in its holster and, absurdly enough, a bowie-knife. Of that
+most unmilitary weapon it was the general's habit to explain that it was
+a souvenir of the peaceful days when he was a civilian.
+
+It was a stormy night. The rain cascaded upon the canvas in torrents,
+with the dull, drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. As the
+whooping blasts charged upon it the frail structure shook and swayed and
+strained at its confining stakes and ropes.
+
+The general finished writing, folded the half-sheet of paper and spoke
+to the soldier guarding Adderson: "Here, Tassman, take that to the
+adjutant-general; then return."
+
+"And the prisoner, General?" said the soldier, saluting, with an
+inquiring glance in the direction of that unfortunate.
+
+"Do as I said," replied the officer, curtly.
+
+The soldier took the note and ducked himself out of the tent. General
+Clavering turned his handsome face toward the Federal spy, looked him in
+the eyes, not unkindly, and said: "It is a bad night, my man."
+
+"For me, yes."
+
+"Do you guess what I have written?"
+
+"Something worth reading, I dare say. And--perhaps it is my vanity--I
+venture to suppose that I am mentioned in it."
+
+"Yes; it is a memorandum for an order to be read to the troops at
+_reveille_ concerning your execution. Also some notes for the guidance
+of the provost-marshal in arranging the details of that event."
+
+"I hope, General, the spectacle will be intelligently arranged, for I
+shall attend it myself."
+
+"Have you any arrangements of your own that you wish to make? Do you
+wish to see a chaplain, for example?"
+
+"I could hardly secure a longer rest for myself by depriving him of some
+of his."
+
+"Good God, man! do you mean to go to your death with nothing but jokes
+upon your lips? Do you know that this is a serious matter?"
+
+"How can I know that? I have never been dead in all my life. I have
+heard that death is a serious matter, but never from any of those who
+have experienced it."
+
+The general was silent for a moment; the man interested, perhaps amused
+him--a type not previously encountered.
+
+"Death," he said, "is at least a loss--a loss of such happiness as we
+have, and of opportunities for more."
+
+"A loss of which we shall never be conscious can be borne with composure
+and therefore expected without apprehension. You must have observed,
+General, that of all the dead men with whom it is your soldierly
+pleasure to strew your path none shows signs of regret."
+
+"If the being dead is not a regrettable condition, yet the becoming so--
+the act of dying--appears to be distinctly disagreeable to one who has
+not lost the power to feel."
+
+"Pain is disagreeable, no doubt. I never suffer it without more or less
+discomfort. But he who lives longest is most exposed to it. What you
+call dying is simply the last pain--there is really no such thing as
+dying. Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to escape. You lift the
+revolver that you are courteously concealing in your lap, and--"
+
+The general blushed like a girl, then laughed softly, disclosing his
+brilliant teeth, made a slight inclination of his handsome head and said
+nothing. The spy continued: "You fire, and I have in my stomach what I
+did not swallow. I fall, but am not dead. After a half-hour of agony I
+am dead. But at any given instant of that half-hour I was either alive
+or dead. There is no transition period.
+
+"When I am hanged to-morrow morning it will be quite the same; while
+conscious I shall be living; when dead, unconscious. Nature appears to
+have ordered the matter quite in my interest--the way that I should have
+ordered it myself. It is so simple," he added with a smile, "that it
+seems hardly worth while to be hanged at all."
+
+At the finish of his remarks there was a long silence. The general sat
+impassive, looking into the man's face, but apparently not attentive to
+what had been said. It was as if his eyes had mounted guard over the
+prisoner while his mind concerned itself with other matters. Presently
+he drew a long, deep breath, shuddered, as one awakened from a dreadful
+dream, and exclaimed almost inaudibly: "Death is horrible!"--this man of
+death.
+
+"It was horrible to our savage ancestors," said the spy, gravely,
+"because they had not enough intelligence to dissociate the idea of
+consciousness from the idea of the physical forms in which it is
+manifested--as an even lower order of intelligence, that of the monkey,
+for example, may be unable to imagine a house without inhabitants, and
+seeing a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupant. To us it is horrible
+because we have inherited the tendency to think it so, accounting for
+the notion by wild and fanciful theories of another world--as names of
+places give rise to legends explaining them and reasonless conduct to
+philosophies in justification. You can hang me, General, but there your
+power of evil ends; you cannot condemn me to heaven."
+
+The general appeared not to have heard; the spy's talk had merely turned
+his thoughts into an unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their
+will independently to conclusions of their own. The storm had ceased,
+and something of the solemn spirit of the night had imparted itself to
+his reflections, giving them the sombre tinge of a supernatural dread.
+Perhaps there was an element of prescience in it. "I should not like to
+die," he said--"not to-night."
+
+He was interrupted--if, indeed, he had intended to speak further--by the
+entrance of an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, the
+provost-marshal. This recalled him to himself; the absent look passed
+away from his face.
+
+"Captain," he said, acknowledging the officer's salute, "this man is a
+Yankee spy captured inside our lines with incriminating papers on him.
+He has confessed. How is the weather?"
+
+"The storm is over, sir, and the moon shining."
+
+"Good; take a file of men, conduct him at once to the parade ground, and
+shoot him."
+
+A sharp cry broke from the spy's lips. He threw himself forward, thrust
+out his neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands.
+
+"Good God!" he cried hoarsely, almost inarticulately; "you do not mean
+that! You forget--I am not to die until morning."
+
+"I have said nothing of morning," replied the general, coldly; "that was
+an assumption of your own. You die now."
+
+"But, General, I beg--I implore you to remember; I am to hang! It will
+take some time to erect the gallows--two hours--an hour. Spies are
+hanged; I have rights under military law. For Heaven's sake, General,
+consider how short--"
+
+"Captain, observe my directions."
+
+The officer drew his sword and fixing his eyes upon the prisoner pointed
+silently to the opening of the tent. The prisoner hesitated; the officer
+grasped him by the collar and pushed him gently forward. As he
+approached the tent pole the frantic man sprang to it and with cat-like
+agility seized the handle of the bowie-knife, plucked the weapon from
+the scabbard and thrusting the captain aside leaped upon the general
+with the fury of a madman, hurling him to the ground and falling
+headlong upon him as he lay. The table was overturned, the candle
+extinguished and they fought blindly in the darkness. The
+provost-marshal sprang to the assistance of his Superior officer and was
+himself prostrated upon the struggling forms. Curses and inarticulate
+cries of rage and pain came from the welter of limbs and bodies; the
+tent came down upon them and beneath its hampering and enveloping folds
+the struggle went on. Private Tassman, returning from his errand and
+dimly conjecturing the situation, threw down his rifle and laying hold
+of the flouncing canvas at random vainly tried to drag it off the men
+under it; and the sentinel who paced up and down in front, not daring to
+leave his beat though the skies should fall, discharged his rifle. The
+report alarmed the camp; drums beat the long roll and bugles sounded the
+assembly, bringing swarms of half-clad men into the moonlight, dressing
+as they ran, and falling into line at the sharp commands of their
+officers. This was well; being in line the men were under control; they
+stood at arms while the general's staff and the men of his escort
+brought order out of confusion by lifting off the fallen tent and
+pulling apart the breathless and bleeding actors in that strange
+contention.
+
+Breathless, indeed, was one: the captain was dead; the handle of the
+bowie-knife, protruding from his throat, was pressed back beneath his
+chin until the end had caught in the angle of the jaw and the hand that
+delivered the blow had been unable to remove the weapon. In the dead
+man's hand was his sword, clenched with a grip that defied the strength
+of the living. Its blade was streaked with red to the hilt.
+
+Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to the earth with a moan and
+fainted. Besides his bruises he had two sword-thrusts--one through the
+thigh, the other through the shoulder.
+
+The spy had suffered the least damage. Apart from a broken right arm,
+his wounds were such only as might have been incurred in an ordinary
+combat with nature's weapons. But he was dazed and seemed hardly to know
+what had occurred. He shrank away from those attending him, cowered upon
+the ground and uttered unintelligible remonstrances. His face, swollen
+by blows and stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless showed white
+beneath his disheveled hair--as white as that of a corpse.
+
+"The man is not insane," said the surgeon, preparing bandages and
+replying to a question; "he is suffering from fright. Who and what is
+he?"
+
+Private Tassman began to explain. It was the opportunity of his life; he
+omitted nothing that could in any way accentuate the importance of his
+own relation to the night's events. When he had finished his story and
+was ready to begin it again nobody gave him any attention.
+
+The general had now recovered consciousness. He raised himself upon his
+elbow, looked about him, and, seeing the spy crouching by a camp-fire,
+guarded, said simply:
+
+"Take that man to the parade ground and shoot him."
+
+"The general's mind wanders," said an officer standing near.
+
+"His mind does _not_ wander," the adjutant-general said. "I have a
+memorandum from him about this business; he had given that same order to
+Hasterlick"--with a motion of the hand toward the dead provost-marshal--
+"and, by God! it shall be executed."
+
+Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adderson, of the Federal army,
+philosopher and wit, kneeling in the moonlight and begging incoherently
+for his life, was shot to death by twenty men. As the volley rang out
+upon the keen air of the midnight, General Clavering, lying white and
+still in the red glow of the camp-fire, opened his big blue eyes, looked
+pleasantly upon those about him and said: "How silent it all is!"
+
+The surgeon looked at the adjutant-general, gravely and significantly.
+The patient's eyes slowly closed, and thus he lay for a few moments;
+then, his face suffused with a smile of ineffable sweetness, he said,
+faintly: "I suppose this must be death," and so passed away.
+
+
+
+
+AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS
+
+I
+
+CONCERNING THE WISH TO BE DEAD
+
+Two men sat in conversation. One was the Governor of the State. The year
+was 1861; the war was on and the Governor already famous for the
+intelligence and zeal with which he directed all the powers and
+resources of his State to the service of the Union.
+
+"What! _you_?" the Governor was saying in evident surprise--"you too
+want a military commission? Really, the fifing and drumming must have
+effected a profound alteration in your convictions. In my character of
+recruiting sergeant I suppose I ought not to be fastidious, but"--there
+was a touch of irony in his manner--"well, have you forgotten that an
+oath of allegiance is required?"
+
+"I have altered neither my convictions nor my sympathies," said the
+other, tranquilly. "While my sympathies are with the South, as you do me
+the honor to recollect, I have never doubted that the North was in the
+right. I am a Southerner in fact and in feeling, but it is my habit in
+matters of importance to act as I think, not as I feel."
+
+The Governor was absently tapping his desk with a pencil; he did not
+immediately reply. After a while he said: "I have heard that there are
+all kinds of men in the world, so I suppose there are some like that,
+and doubtless you think yourself one. I've known you a long time and--
+pardon me--I don't think so."
+
+"Then I am to understand that my application is denied?"
+
+"Unless you can remove my belief that your Southern sympathies are in
+some degree a disqualification, yes. I do not doubt your good faith, and
+I know you to be abundantly fitted by intelligence and special training
+for the duties of an officer. Your convictions, you say, favor the Union
+cause, but I prefer a man with his heart in it. The heart is what men
+fight with."
+
+"Look here, Governor," said the younger man, with a smile that had more
+light than warmth: "I have something up my sleeve--a qualification which
+I had hoped it would not be necessary to mention. A great military
+authority has given a simple recipe for being a good soldier: 'Try
+always to get yourself killed.' It is with that purpose that I wish to
+enter the service. I am not, perhaps, much of a patriot, but I wish to
+be dead."
+
+The Governor looked at him rather sharply, then a little coldly. "There
+is a simpler and franker way," he said.
+
+"In my family, sir," was the reply, "we do not do that--no Armisted has
+ever done that."
+
+A long silence ensued and neither man looked at the other. Presently the
+Governor lifted his eyes from the pencil, which had resumed its tapping,
+and said:
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"My wife."
+
+The Governor tossed the pencil into the desk, rose and walked two or
+three times across the room. Then he turned to Armisted, who also had
+risen, looked at him more coldly than before and said: "But the man--
+would it not be better that he--could not the country spare him better
+than it can spare you? Or are the Armisteds opposed to 'the unwritten
+law'?"
+
+The Armisteds, apparently, could feel an insult: the face of the younger
+man flushed, then paled, but he subdued himself to the service of his
+purpose.
+
+"The man's identity is unknown to me," he said, calmly enough.
+
+"Pardon me," said the Governor, with even less of visible contrition
+than commonly underlies those words. After a moment's reflection he
+added: "I shall send you to-morrow a captain's commission in the Tenth
+Infantry, now at Nashville, Tennessee. Good night."
+
+"Good night, sir. I thank you."
+
+Left alone, the Governor remained for a time motionless, leaning against
+his desk. Presently he shrugged his shoulders as if throwing off a
+burden. "This is a bad business," he said.
+
+Seating himself at a reading-table before the fire, he took up the book
+nearest his hand, absently opening it. His eyes fell upon this sentence:
+
+"When God made it necessary for an unfaithful wife to lie about her
+husband in justification of her own sins He had the tenderness to endow
+men with the folly to believe her."
+
+He looked at the title of the book; it was, _His Excellency the Fool_.
+
+He flung the volume into the fire.
+
+II
+
+HOW TO SAY WHAT IS WORTH HEARING
+
+The enemy, defeated in two days of battle at Pittsburg Landing, had
+sullenly retired to Corinth, whence he had come. For manifest
+incompetence Grant, whose beaten army had been saved from destruction
+and capture by Buell's soldierly activity and skill, had been relieved
+of his command, which nevertheless had not been given to Buell, but to
+Halleck, a man of unproved powers, a theorist, sluggish, irresolute.
+Foot by foot his troops, always deployed in line-of-battle to resist the
+enemy's bickering skirmishers, always entrenching against the columns
+that never came, advanced across the thirty miles of forest and swamp
+toward an antagonist prepared to vanish at contact, like a ghost at
+cock-crow. It was a campaign of "excursions and alarums," of
+reconnoissances and counter-marches, of cross-purposes and countermanded
+orders. For weeks the solemn farce held attention, luring distinguished
+civilians from fields of political ambition to see what they safely
+could of the horrors of war. Among these was our friend the Governor. At
+the headquarters of the army and in the camps of the troops from his
+State he was a familiar figure, attended by the several members of his
+personal staff, showily horsed, faultlessly betailored and bravely
+silk-hatted. Things of charm they were, rich in suggestions of peaceful
+lands beyond a sea of strife. The bedraggled soldier looked up from his
+trench as they passed, leaned upon his spade and audibly damned them to
+signify his sense of their ornamental irrelevance to the austerities of
+his trade.
+
+"I think, Governor," said General Masterson one day, going into informal
+session atop of his horse and throwing one leg across the pommel of his
+saddle, his favorite posture--"I think I would not ride any farther in
+that direction if I were you. We've nothing out there but a line of
+skirmishers. That, I presume, is why I was directed to put these siege
+guns here: if the skirmishers are driven in the enemy will die of
+dejection at being unable to haul them away--they're a trifle heavy."
+
+There is reason to fear that the unstrained quality of this military
+humor dropped not as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath
+the civilian's silk hat. Anyhow he abated none of his dignity in
+recognition.
+
+"I understand," he said, gravely, "that some of my men are out there--a
+company of the Tenth, commanded by Captain Armisted. I should like to
+meet him if you do not mind."
+
+"He is worth meeting. But there's a bad bit of jungle out there, and I
+should advise that you leave your horse and"--with a look at the
+Governor's retinue--"your other impedimenta."
+
+The Governor went forward alone and on foot. In a half-hour he had
+pushed through a tangled undergrowth covering a boggy soil and entered
+upon firm and more open ground. Here he found a half-company of infantry
+lounging behind a line of stacked rifles. The men wore their
+accoutrements--their belts, cartridge-boxes, haversacks and canteens.
+Some lying at full length on the dry leaves were fast asleep: others in
+small groups gossiped idly of this and that; a few played at cards; none
+was far from the line of stacked arms. To the civilian's eye the scene
+was one of carelessness, confusion, indifference; a soldier would have
+observed expectancy and readiness.
+
+At a little distance apart an officer in fatigue uniform, armed, sat on
+a fallen tree noting the approach of the visitor, to whom a sergeant,
+rising from one of the groups, now came forward.
+
+"I wish to see Captain Armisted," said the Governor.
+
+The sergeant eyed him narrowly, saying nothing, pointed to the officer,
+and taking a rifle from one of the stacks, accompanied him.
+
+"This man wants to see you, sir," said the sergeant, saluting. The
+officer rose.
+
+It would have been a sharp eye that would have recognized him. His hair,
+which but a few months before had been brown, was streaked with gray.
+His face, tanned by exposure, was seamed as with age. A long livid scar
+across the forehead marked the stroke of a sabre; one cheek was drawn
+and puckered by the work of a bullet. Only a woman of the loyal North
+would have thought the man handsome.
+
+"Armisted--Captain," said the Governor, extending his hand, "do you not
+know me?"
+
+"I know you, sir, and I salute you--as the Governor of my State."
+
+Lifting his right hand to the level of his eyes he threw it outward and
+downward. In the code of military etiquette there is no provision for
+shaking hands. That of the civilian was withdrawn. If he felt either
+surprise or chagrin his face did not betray it.
+
+"It is the hand that signed your commission," he said.
+
+"And it is the hand--"
+
+The sentence remains unfinished. The sharp report of a rifle came from
+the front, followed by another and another. A bullet hissed through the
+forest and struck a tree near by. The men sprang from the ground and
+even before the captain's high, clear voice was done intoning the
+command "At-ten-tion!" had fallen into line in rear of the stacked arms.
+Again--and now through the din of a crackling fusillade--sounded the
+strong, deliberate sing-song of authority: "Take... arms!" followed by
+the rattle of unlocking bayonets.
+
+Bullets from the unseen enemy were now flying thick and fast, though
+mostly well spent and emitting the humming sound which signified
+interference by twigs and rotation in the plane of flight. Two or three
+of the men in the line were already struck and down. A few wounded men
+came limping awkwardly out of the undergrowth from the skirmish line in
+front; most of them did not pause, but held their way with white faces
+and set teeth to the rear.
+
+Suddenly there was a deep, jarring report in front, followed by the
+startling rush of a shell, which passing overhead exploded in the edge
+of a thicket, setting afire the fallen leaves. Penetrating the din--
+seeming to float above it like the melody of a soaring bird--rang the
+slow, aspirated monotones of the captain's several commands, without
+emphasis, without accent, musical and restful as an evensong under the
+harvest moon. Familiar with this tranquilizing chant in moments of
+imminent peril, these raw soldiers of less than a year's training
+yielded themselves to the spell, executing its mandates with the
+composure and precision of veterans. Even the distinguished civilian
+behind his tree, hesitating between pride and terror, was accessible to
+its charm and suasion. He was conscious of a fortified resolution and
+ran away only when the skirmishers, under orders to rally on the
+reserve, came out of the woods like hunted hares and formed on the left
+of the stiff little line, breathing hard and thankful for the boon of
+breath.
+
+III
+
+THE FIGHTING OF ONE WHOSE HEART WAS NOT IN THE QUARREL
+
+Guided in his retreat by that of the fugitive wounded, the Governor
+struggled bravely to the rear through the "bad bit of jungle." He was
+well winded and a trifle confused. Excepting a single rifle-shot now and
+again, there was no sound of strife behind him; the enemy was pulling
+himself together for a new onset against an antagonist of whose numbers
+and tactical disposition he was in doubt. The fugitive felt that he
+would probably be spared to his country, and only commended the
+arrangements of Providence to that end, but in leaping a small brook in
+more open ground one of the arrangements incurred the mischance of a
+disabling sprain at the ankle. He was unable to continue his flight, for
+he was too fat to hop, and after several vain attempts, causing
+intolerable pain, seated himself on the earth to nurse his ignoble
+disability and deprecate the military situation.
+
+A brisk renewal of the firing broke out and stray bullets came flitting
+and droning by. Then came the crash of two clean, definite volleys,
+followed by a continuous rattle, through which he heard the yells and
+cheers of the combatants, punctuated by thunderclaps of cannon. All this
+told him that Armisted's little command was bitterly beset and fighting
+at close quarters. The wounded men whom he had distanced began to
+straggle by on either hand, their numbers visibly augmented by new
+levies from the line. Singly and by twos and threes, some supporting
+comrades more desperately hurt than themselves, but all deaf to his
+appeals for assistance, they sifted through the underbrush and
+disappeared. The firing was increasingly louder and more distinct, and
+presently the ailing fugitives were succeeded by men who strode with a
+firmer tread, occasionally facing about and discharging their pieces,
+then doggedly resuming their retreat, reloading as they walked. Two or
+three fell as he looked, and lay motionless. One had enough of life left
+in him to make a pitiful attempt to drag himself to cover. A passing
+comrade paused beside him long enough to fire, appraised the poor
+devil's disability with a look and moved sullenly on, inserting a
+cartridge in his weapon.
+
+In all this was none of the pomp of war--no hint of glory. Even in his
+distress and peril the helpless civilian could not forbear to contrast
+it with the gorgeous parades and reviews held in honor of himself--with
+the brilliant uniforms, the music, the banners, and the marching. It was
+an ugly and sickening business: to all that was artistic in his nature,
+revolting, brutal, in bad taste.
+
+"Ugh!" he grunted, shuddering--"this is beastly! Where is the charm of
+it all? Where are the elevated sentiments, the devotion, the heroism,
+the--"
+
+From a point somewhere near, in the direction of the pursuing enemy,
+rose the clear, deliberate sing-song of Captain Armisted.
+
+"Stead-y, men--stead-y. Halt! Com-mence fir-ing."
+
+The rattle of fewer than a score of rifles could be distinguished
+through the general uproar, and again that penetrating falsetto:
+
+"Cease fir-ing. In re-treat... maaarch!"
+
+In a few moments this remnant had drifted slowly past the Governor, all
+to the right of him as they faced in retiring, the men deployed at
+intervals of a half-dozen paces. At the extreme left and a few yards
+behind came the captain. The civilian called out his name, but he did
+not hear. A swarm of men in gray now broke out of cover in pursuit,
+making directly for the spot where the Governor lay--some accident of
+the ground had caused them to converge upon that point: their line had
+become a crowd. In a last struggle for life and liberty the Governor
+attempted to rise, and looking back the captain saw him. Promptly, but
+with the same slow precision as before, he sang his commands:
+
+"Skirm-ish-ers, halt!" The men stopped and according to rule turned to
+face the enemy.
+
+"Ral-ly on the right!"--and they came in at a run, fixing bayonets and
+forming loosely on the man at that end of the line.
+
+"Forward... to save the Gov-ern-or of your State... doub-le quick...
+maaarch!"
+
+Only one man disobeyed this astonishing command! He was dead. With a
+cheer they sprang forward over the twenty or thirty paces between them
+and their task. The captain having a shorter distance to go arrived
+first--simultaneously with the enemy. A half-dozen hasty shots were
+fired at him, and the foremost man--a fellow of heroic stature, hatless
+and bare-breasted--made a vicious sweep at his head with a clubbed
+rifle. The officer parried the blow at the cost of a broken arm and
+drove his sword to the hilt into the giant's breast. As the body fell
+the weapon was wrenched from his hand and before he could pluck his
+revolver from the scabbard at his belt another man leaped upon him like
+a tiger, fastening both hands upon his throat and bearing him backward
+upon the prostrate Governor, still struggling to rise. This man was
+promptly spitted upon the bayonet of a Federal sergeant and his
+death-gripe on the captain's throat loosened by a kick upon each wrist.
+When the captain had risen he was at the rear of his men, who had all
+passed over and around him and were thrusting fiercely at their more
+numerous but less coherent antagonists. Nearly all the rifles on both
+sides were empty and in the crush there was neither time nor room to
+reload. The Confederates were at a disadvantage in that most of them
+lacked bayonets; they fought by bludgeoning--and a clubbed rifle is a
+formidable arm. The sound of the conflict was a clatter like that of the
+interlocking horns of battling bulls--now and then the pash of a crushed
+skull, an oath, or a grunt caused by the impact of a rifle's muzzle
+against the abdomen transfixed by its bayonet. Through an opening made
+by the fall of one of his men Captain Armisted sprang, with his dangling
+left arm; in his right hand a full-charged revolver, which he fired with
+rapidity and terrible effect into the thick of the gray crowd: but
+across the bodies of the slain the survivors in the front were pushed
+forward by their comrades in the rear till again they breasted the
+tireless bayonets. There were fewer bayonets now to breast--a beggarly
+half-dozen, all told. A few minutes more of this rough work--a little
+fighting back to back--and all would be over.
+
+Suddenly a lively firing was heard on the right and the left: a fresh
+line of Federal skirmishers came forward at a run, driving before them
+those parts of the Confederate line that had been separated by staying
+the advance of the centre. And behind these new and noisy combatants, at
+a distance of two or three hundred yards, could be seen, indistinct
+among the trees a line-of-battle!
+
+Instinctively before retiring, the crowd in gray made a tremendous rush
+upon its handful of antagonists, overwhelming them by mere momentum and,
+unable to use weapons in the crush, trampled them, stamped savagely on
+their limbs, their bodies, their necks, their faces; then retiring with
+bloody feet across its own dead it joined the general rout and the
+incident was at an end.
+
+IV
+
+THE GREAT HONOR THE GREAT
+
+The Governor, who had been unconscious, opened his eyes and stared about
+him, slowly recalling the day's events. A man in the uniform of a major
+was kneeling beside him; he was a surgeon. Grouped about were the
+civilian members of the Governor's staff, their faces expressing a
+natural solicitude regarding their offices. A little apart stood General
+Masterson addressing another officer and gesticulating with a cigar. He
+was saying: "It was the beautifulest fight ever made--by God, sir, it
+was great!"
+
+The beauty and greatness were attested by a row of dead, trimly
+disposed, and another of wounded, less formally placed, restless,
+half-naked, but bravely bebandaged.
+
+"How do you feel, sir?" said the surgeon. "I find no wound."
+
+"I think I am all right," the patient replied, sitting up. "It is that
+ankle."
+
+The surgeon transferred his attention to the ankle, cutting away the
+boot. All eyes followed the knife.
+
+In moving the leg a folded paper was uncovered. The patient picked it up
+and carelessly opened it. It was a letter three months old, signed
+"Julia." Catching sight of his name in it he read it. It was nothing
+very remarkable--merely a weak woman's confession of unprofitable sin--
+the penitence of a faithless wife deserted by her betrayer. The letter
+had fallen from the pocket of Captain Armisted; the reader quietly
+transferred it to his own.
+
+An aide-de-camp rode up and dismounted. Advancing to the Governor he
+saluted.
+
+"Sir," he said, "I am sorry to find you wounded--the Commanding General
+has not been informed. He presents his compliments and I am directed to
+say that he has ordered for to-morrow a grand review of the reserve
+corps in your honor. I venture to add that the General's carriage is at
+your service if you are able to attend."
+
+"Be pleased to say to the Commanding General that I am deeply touched by
+his kindness. If you have the patience to wait a few moments you shall
+convey a more definite reply."
+
+He smiled brightly and glancing at the surgeon and his assistants added:
+"At present--if you will permit an allusion to the horrors of peace--I
+am 'in the hands of my friends.'"
+
+The humor of the great is infectious; all laughed who heard.
+
+"Where is Captain Armisted?" the Governor asked, not altogether
+carelessly.
+
+The surgeon looked up from his work, pointing silently to the nearest
+body in the row of dead, the features discreetly covered with a
+handkerchief. It was so near that the great man could have laid his hand
+upon it, but he did not. He may have feared that it would bleed.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A CONSCIENCE
+
+I
+
+Captain Parrol Hartroy stood at the advanced post of his picket-guard,
+talking in low tones with the sentinel. This post was on a turnpike
+which bisected the captain's camp, a half-mile in rear, though the camp
+was not in sight from that point. The officer was apparently giving the
+soldier certain instructions--was perhaps merely inquiring if all were
+quiet in front. As the two stood talking a man approached them from the
+direction of the camp, carelessly whistling, and was promptly halted by
+the soldier. He was evidently a civilian--a tall person, coarsely clad
+in the home-made stuff of yellow gray, called "butternut," which was
+men's only wear in the latter days of the Confederacy. On his head was a
+slouch felt hat, once white, from beneath which hung masses of uneven
+hair, seemingly unacquainted with either scissors or comb. The man's
+face was rather striking; a broad forehead, high nose, and thin cheeks,
+the mouth invisible in the full dark beard, which seemed as neglected as
+the hair. The eyes were large and had that steadiness and fixity of
+attention which so frequently mark a considering intelligence and a will
+not easily turned from its purpose--so say those physiognomists who have
+that kind of eyes. On the whole, this was a man whom one would be likely
+to observe and be observed by. He carried a walking-stick freshly cut
+from the forest and his ailing cowskin boots were white with dust.
+
+"Show your pass," said the Federal soldier, a trifle more imperiously
+perhaps than he would have thought necessary if he had not been under
+the eye of his commander, who with folded arms looked on from the
+roadside.
+
+"'Lowed you'd rec'lect me, Gineral," said the wayfarer tranquilly, while
+producing the paper from the pocket of his coat. There was something in
+his tone--perhaps a faint suggestion of irony--which made his elevation
+of his obstructor to exalted rank less agreeable to that worthy warrior
+than promotion is commonly found to be. "You-all have to be purty
+pertickler, I reckon," he added, in a more conciliatory tone, as if in
+half-apology for being halted.
+
+Having read the pass, with his rifle resting on the ground, the soldier
+handed the document back without a word, shouldered his weapon, and
+returned to his commander. The civilian passed on in the middle of the
+road, and when he had penetrated the circumjacent Confederacy a few
+yards resumed his whistling and was soon out of sight beyond an angle in
+the road, which at that point entered a thin forest. Suddenly the
+officer undid his arms from his breast, drew a revolver from his belt
+and sprang forward at a run in the same direction, leaving his sentinel
+in gaping astonishment at his post. After making to the various visible
+forms of nature a solemn promise to be damned, that gentleman resumed
+the air of stolidity which is supposed to be appropriate to a state of
+alert military attention.
+
+II
+
+Captain Hartroy held an independent command. His force consisted of a
+company of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a section of artillery,
+detached from the army to which they belonged, to defend an important
+defile in the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. It was a field
+officer's command held by a line officer promoted from the ranks, where
+he had quietly served until "discovered." His post was one of
+exceptional peril; its defense entailed a heavy responsibility and he
+had wisely been given corresponding discretionary powers, all the more
+necessary because of his distance from the main army, the precarious
+nature of his communications and the lawless character of the enemy's
+irregular troops infesting that region. He had strongly fortified his
+little camp, which embraced a village of a half-dozen dwellings and a
+country store, and had collected a considerable quantity of supplies. To
+a few resident civilians of known loyalty, with whom it was desirable to
+trade, and of whose services in various ways he sometimes availed
+himself, he had given written passes admitting them within his lines. It
+is easy to understand that an abuse of this privilege in the interest of
+the enemy might entail serious consequences. Captain Hartroy had made an
+order to the effect that any one so abusing it would be summarily shot.
+
+While the sentinel had been examining the civilian's pass the captain
+had eyed the latter narrowly. He thought his appearance familiar and had
+at first no doubt of having given him the pass which had satisfied the
+sentinel. It was not until the man had got out of sight and hearing that
+his identity was disclosed by a revealing light from memory. With
+soldierly promptness of decision the officer had acted on the
+revelation.
+
+III
+
+To any but a singularly self-possessed man the apparition of an officer
+of the military forces, formidably clad, bearing in one hand a sheathed
+sword and in the other a cocked revolver, and rushing in furious
+pursuit, is no doubt disquieting to a high degree; upon the man to whom
+the pursuit was in this instance directed it appeared to have no other
+effect than somewhat to intensify his tranquillity. He might easily
+enough have escaped into the forest to the right or the left, but chose
+another course of action--turned and quietly faced the captain, saying
+as he came up: "I reckon ye must have something to say to me, which ye
+disremembered. What mout it be, neighbor?"
+
+But the "neighbor" did not answer, being engaged in the unneighborly act
+of covering him with a cocked pistol.
+
+"Surrender," said the captain as calmly as a slight breathlessness from
+exertion would permit, "or you die."
+
+There was no menace in the manner of this demand; that was all in the
+matter and in the means of enforcing it. There was, too, something not
+altogether reassuring in the cold gray eyes that glanced along the
+barrel of the weapon. For a moment the two men stood looking at each
+other in silence; then the civilian, with no appearance of fear--with as
+great apparent unconcern as when complying with the less austere demand
+of the sentinel--slowly pulled from his pocket the paper which had
+satisfied that humble functionary and held it out, saying:
+
+"I reckon this 'ere parss from Mister Hartroy is--"
+
+"The pass is a forgery," the officer said, interrupting. "I am Captain
+Hartroy--and you are Dramer Brune."
+
+It would have required a sharp eye to observe the slight pallor of the
+civilian's face at these words, and the only other manifestation
+attesting their significance was a voluntary relaxation of the thumb and
+fingers holding the dishonored paper, which, falling to the road,
+unheeded, was rolled by a gentle wind and then lay still, with a coating
+of dust, as in humiliation for the lie that it bore. A moment later the
+civilian, still looking unmoved into the barrel of the pistol, said:
+
+"Yes, I am Dramer Brune, a Confederate spy, and your prisoner. I have on
+my person, as you will soon discover, a plan of your fort and its
+armament, a statement of the distribution of your men and their number,
+a map of the approaches, showing the positions of all your outposts. My
+life is fairly yours, but if you wish it taken in a more formal way than
+by your own hand, and if you are willing to spare me the indignity of
+marching into camp at the muzzle of your pistol, I promise you that I
+will neither resist, escape, nor remonstrate, but will submit to
+whatever penalty may be imposed."
+
+The officer lowered his pistol, uncocked it, and thrust it into its
+place in his belt. Brune advanced a step, extending his right hand.
+
+"It is the hand of a traitor and a spy," said the officer coldly, and
+did not take it. The other bowed.
+
+"Come," said the captain, "let us go to camp; you shall not die until
+to-morrow morning."
+
+He turned his back upon his prisoner, and these two enigmatical men
+retraced their steps and soon passed the sentinel, who expressed his
+general sense of things by a needless and exaggerated salute to his
+commander.
+
+IV
+
+Early on the morning after these events the two men, captor and captive,
+sat in the tent of the former. A table was between them on which lay,
+among a number of letters, official and private, which the captain had
+written during the night, the incriminating papers found upon the spy.
+That gentleman had slept through the night in an adjoining tent,
+unguarded. Both, having breakfasted, were now smoking.
+
+"Mr. Brune," said Captain Hartroy, "you probably do not understand why I
+recognized you in your disguise, nor how I was aware of your name."
+
+"I have not sought to learn, Captain," the prisoner said with quiet
+dignity.
+
+"Nevertheless I should like you to know--if the story will not offend.
+You will perceive that my knowledge of you goes back to the autumn of
+1861. At that time you were a private in an Ohio regiment--a brave and
+trusted soldier. To the surprise and grief of your officers and comrades
+you deserted and went over to the enemy. Soon afterward you were
+captured in a skirmish, recognized, tried by court-martial and sentenced
+to be shot. Awaiting the execution of the sentence you were confined,
+unfettered, in a freight car standing on a side track of a railway."
+
+"At Grafton, Virginia," said Brune, pushing the ashes from his cigar
+with the little finger of the hand holding it, and without looking up.
+
+"At Grafton, Virginia," the captain repeated. "One dark and stormy night
+a soldier who had just returned from a long, fatiguing march was put on
+guard over you. He sat on a cracker box inside the car, near the door,
+his rifle loaded and the bayonet fixed. You sat in a corner and his
+orders were to kill you if you attempted to rise."
+
+"But if I _asked_ to rise he might call the corporal of the guard."
+
+"Yes. As the long silent hours wore away the soldier yielded to the
+demands of nature: he himself incurred the death penalty by sleeping at
+his post of duty."
+
+"You did."
+
+"What! you recognize me? you have known me all along?"
+
+The captain had risen and was walking the floor of his tent, visibly
+excited. His face was flushed, the gray eyes had lost the cold, pitiless
+look which they had shown when Brune had seen them over the pistol
+barrel; they had softened wonderfully.
+
+"I knew you," said the spy, with his customary tranquillity, "the moment
+you faced me, demanding my surrender. In the circumstances it would have
+been hardly becoming in me to recall these matters. I am perhaps a
+traitor, certainly a spy; but I should not wish to seem a suppliant."
+
+The captain had paused in his walk and was facing his prisoner. There
+was a singular huskiness in his voice as he spoke again.
+
+"Mr. Brune, whatever your conscience may permit you to be, you saved my
+life at what you must have believed the cost of your own. Until I saw
+you yesterday when halted by my sentinel I believed you dead--thought
+that you had suffered the fate which through my own crime you might
+easily have escaped. You had only to step from the car and leave me to
+take your place before the firing-squad. You had a divine compassion.
+You pitied my fatigue. You let me sleep, watched over me, and as the
+time drew near for the relief-guard to come and detect me in my crime,
+you gently waked me. Ah, Brune, Brune, that was well done--that was
+great--that--"
+
+The captain's voice failed him; the tears were running down his face and
+sparkled upon his beard and his breast. Resuming his seat at the table,
+he buried his face in his arms and sobbed. All else was silence.
+
+Suddenly the clear warble of a bugle was heard sounding the "assembly."
+The captain started and raised his wet face from his arms; it had turned
+ghastly pale. Outside, in the sunlight, were heard the stir of the men
+falling into line; the voices of the sergeants calling the roll; the
+tapping of the drummers as they braced their drums. The captain spoke
+again:
+
+"I ought to have confessed my fault in order to relate the story of your
+magnanimity; it might have procured you a pardon. A hundred times I
+resolved to do so, but shame prevented. Besides, your sentence was just
+and righteous. Well, Heaven forgive me! I said nothing, and my regiment
+was soon afterward ordered to Tennessee and I never heard about you."
+
+"It was all right, sir," said Brune, without visible emotion; "I escaped
+and returned to my colors--the Confederate colors. I should like to add
+that before deserting from the Federal service I had earnestly asked a
+discharge, on the ground of altered convictions. I was answered by
+punishment."
+
+"Ah, but if I had suffered the penalty of my crime--if you had not
+generously given me the life that I accepted without gratitude you would
+not be again in the shadow and imminence of death."
+
+The prisoner started slightly and a look of anxiety came into his face.
+One would have said, too, that he was surprised. At that moment a
+lieutenant, the adjutant, appeared at the opening of the tent and
+saluted. "Captain," he said, "the battalion is formed."
+
+Captain Hartroy had recovered his composure. He turned to the officer
+and said: "Lieutenant, go to Captain Graham and say that I direct him to
+assume command of the battalion and parade it outside the parapet. This
+gentleman is a deserter and a spy; he is to be shot to death in the
+presence of the troops. He will accompany you, unbound and unguarded."
+
+While the adjutant waited at the door the two men inside the tent rose
+and exchanged ceremonious bows, Brune immediately retiring.
+
+Half an hour later an old negro cook, the only person left in camp
+except the commander, was so startled by the sound of a volley of
+musketry that he dropped the kettle that he was lifting from a fire. But
+for his consternation and the hissing which the contents of the kettle
+made among the embers, he might also have heard, nearer at hand, the
+single pistol shot with which Captain Hartroy renounced the life which
+in conscience he could no longer keep.
+
+In compliance with the terms of a note that he left for the officer who
+succeeded him in command, he was buried, like the deserter and spy,
+without military honors; and in the solemn shadow of the mountain which
+knows no more of war the two sleep well in long-forgotten graves.
+
+
+
+
+ONE KIND OF OFFICER
+
+I
+
+OF THE USES OF CIVILITY
+
+"Captain Ransome, it is not permitted to you to know _anything_. It is
+sufficient that you obey my order--which permit me to repeat. If you
+perceive any movement of troops in your front you are to open fire, and
+if attacked hold this position as long as you can. Do I make myself
+understood, sir?"
+
+"Nothing could be plainer. Lieutenant Price,"--this to an officer of his
+own battery, who had ridden up in time to hear the order--"the general's
+meaning is clear, is it not?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+The lieutenant passed on to his post. For a moment General Cameron and
+the commander of the battery sat in their saddles, looking at each other
+in silence. There was no more to say; apparently too much had already
+been said. Then the superior officer nodded coldly and turned his horse
+to ride away. The artillerist saluted slowly, gravely, and with extreme
+formality. One acquainted with the niceties of military etiquette would
+have said that by his manner he attested a sense of the rebuke that he
+had incurred. It is one of the important uses of civility to signify
+resentment.
+
+When the general had joined his staff and escort, awaiting him at a
+little distance, the whole cavalcade moved off toward the right of the
+guns and vanished in the fog. Captain Ransome was alone, silent,
+motionless as an equestrian statue. The gray fog, thickening every
+moment, closed in about him like a visible doom.
+
+II
+
+UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MEN DO NOT WISH TO BE SHOT
+
+The fighting of the day before had been desultory and indecisive. At the
+points of collision the smoke of battle had hung in blue sheets among
+the branches of the trees till beaten into nothing by the falling rain.
+In the softened earth the wheels of cannon and ammunition wagons cut
+deep, ragged furrows, and movements of infantry seemed impeded by the
+mud that clung to the soldiers' feet as, with soaken garments and rifles
+imperfectly protected by capes of overcoats they went dragging in
+sinuous lines hither and thither through dripping forest and flooded
+field. Mounted officers, their heads protruding from rubber ponchos that
+glittered like black armor, picked their way, singly and in loose
+groups, among the men, coming and going with apparent aimlessness and
+commanding attention from nobody but one another. Here and there a dead
+man, his clothing defiled with earth, his face covered with a blanket or
+showing yellow and claylike in the rain, added his dispiriting influence
+to that of the other dismal features of the scene and augmented the
+general discomfort with a particular dejection. Very repulsive these
+wrecks looked--not at all heroic, and nobody was accessible to the
+infection of their patriotic example. Dead upon the field of honor, yes;
+but the field of honor was so very wet! It makes a difference.
+
+The general engagement that all expected did not occur, none of the
+small advantages accruing, now to this side and now to that, in isolated
+and accidental collisions being followed up. Half-hearted attacks
+provoked a sullen resistance which was satisfied with mere repulse.
+Orders were obeyed with mechanical fidelity; no one did any more than
+his duty.
+
+"The army is cowardly to-day," said General Cameron, the commander of a
+Federal brigade, to his adjutant-general.
+
+"The army is cold," replied the officer addressed, "and--yes, it doesn't
+wish to be like that."
+
+He pointed to one of the dead bodies, lying in a thin pool of yellow
+water, its face and clothing bespattered with mud from hoof and wheel.
+
+The army's weapons seemed to share its military delinquency. The rattle
+of rifles sounded flat and contemptible. It had no meaning and scarcely
+roused to attention and expectancy the unengaged parts of the
+line-of-battle and the waiting reserves. Heard at a little distance, the
+reports of cannon were feeble in volume and _timbre_: they lacked sting
+and resonance. The guns seemed to be fired with light charges,
+unshotted. And so the futile day wore on to its dreary close, and then
+to a night of discomfort succeeded a day of apprehension.
+
+An army has a personality. Beneath the individual thoughts and emotions
+of its component parts it thinks and feels as a unit. And in this large,
+inclusive sense of things lies a wiser wisdom than the mere sum of all
+that it knows. On that dismal morning this great brute force, groping at
+the bottom of a white ocean of fog among trees that seemed as sea weeds,
+had a dumb consciousness that all was not well; that a day's manoeuvring
+had resulted in a faulty disposition of its parts, a blind diffusion of
+its strength. The men felt insecure and talked among themselves of such
+tactical errors as with their meager military vocabulary they were able
+to name. Field and line officers gathered in groups and spoke more
+learnedly of what they apprehended with no greater clearness. Commanders
+of brigades and divisions looked anxiously to their connections on the
+right and on the left, sent staff officers on errands of inquiry and
+pushed skirmish lines silently and cautiously forward into the dubious
+region between the known and the unknown. At some points on the line the
+troops, apparently of their own volition, constructed such defenses as
+they could without the silent spade and the noisy ax.
+
+One of these points was held by Captain Ransome's battery of six guns.
+Provided always with intrenching tools, his men had labored with
+diligence during the night, and now his guns thrust their black muzzles
+through the embrasures of a really formidable earthwork. It crowned a
+slight acclivity devoid of undergrowth and providing an unobstructed
+fire that would sweep the ground for an unknown distance in front. The
+position could hardly have been better chosen. It had this peculiarity,
+which Captain Ransome, who was greatly addicted to the use of the
+compass, had not failed to observe: it faced northward, whereas he knew
+that the general line of the army must face eastward. In fact, that part
+of the line was "refused"--that is to say, bent backward, away from the
+enemy. This implied that Captain Ransome's battery was somewhere near
+the left flank of the army; for an army in line of battle retires its
+flanks if the nature of the ground will permit, they being its
+vulnerable points. Actually, Captain Ransome appeared to hold the
+extreme left of the line, no troops being visible in that direction
+beyond his own. Immediately in rear of his guns occurred that
+conversation between him and his brigade commander, the concluding and
+more picturesque part of which is reported above.
+
+III
+
+HOW TO PLAY THE CANNON WITHOUT NOTES
+
+Captain Ransome sat motionless and silent on horseback. A few yards away
+his men were standing at their guns. Somewhere--everywhere within a few
+miles--were a hundred thousand men, friends and enemies. Yet he was
+alone. The mist had isolated him as completely as if he had been in the
+heart of a desert. His world was a few square yards of wet and trampled
+earth about the feet of his horse. His comrades in that ghostly domain
+were invisible and inaudible. These were conditions favorable to
+thought, and he was thinking. Of the nature of his thoughts his
+clear-cut handsome features yielded no attesting sign. His face was as
+inscrutable as that of the sphinx. Why should it have made a record
+which there was none to observe? At the sound of a footstep he merely
+turned his eyes in the direction whence it came; one of his sergeants,
+looking a giant in stature in the false perspective of the fog,
+approached, and when clearly defined and reduced to his true dimensions
+by propinquity, saluted and stood at attention.
+
+"Well, Morris," said the officer, returning his subordinate's salute.
+
+"Lieutenant Price directed me to tell you, sir, that most of the
+infantry has been withdrawn. We have not sufficient support."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"I am to say that some of our men have been out over the works a hundred
+yards and report that our front is not picketed."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"They were so far forward that they heard the enemy."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"They heard the rattle of the wheels of artillery and the commands of
+officers."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The enemy is moving toward our works."
+
+Captain Ransome, who had been facing to the rear of his line--toward the
+point where the brigade commander and his cavalcade had been swallowed
+up by the fog--reined his horse about and faced the other way. Then he
+sat motionless as before.
+
+"Who are the men who made that statement?" he inquired, without looking
+at the sergeant; his eyes were directed straight into the fog over the
+head of his horse.
+
+"Corporal Hassman and Gunner Manning."
+
+Captain Ransome was a moment silent. A slight pallor came into his face,
+a slight compression affected the lines of his lips, but it would have
+required a closer observer than Sergeant Morris to note the change.
+There was none in the voice.
+
+"Sergeant, present my compliments to Lieutenant Price and direct him to
+open fire with all the guns. Grape."
+
+The sergeant saluted and vanished in the fog.
+
+IV.
+
+TO INTRODUCE GENERAL MASTERSON
+
+Searching for his division commander,
+General Cameron and his escort had followed the line of battle for
+nearly a mile to the right of Ransome's battery, and there learned that
+the division commander had gone in search of the corps commander. It
+seemed that everybody was looking for his immediate superior--an ominous
+circumstance. It meant that nobody was quite at ease. So General Cameron
+rode on for another half-mile, where by good luck he met General
+Masterson, the division commander, returning.
+
+"Ah, Cameron," said the higher officer, reining up, and throwing his
+right leg across the pommel of his saddle in a most unmilitary way--
+"anything up? Found a good position for your battery, I hope--if one
+place is better than another in a fog."
+
+"Yes, general," said the other, with the greater dignity appropriate to
+his less exalted rank, "my battery is very well placed. I wish I could
+say that it is as well commanded."
+
+"Eh, what's that? Ransome? I think him a fine fellow. In the army we
+should be proud of him."
+
+It was customary for officers of the regular army to speak of it as "the
+army." As the greatest cities are most provincial, so the
+self-complacency of aristocracies is most frankly plebeian.
+
+"He is too fond of his opinion. By the way, in order to occupy the hill
+that he holds I had to extend my line dangerously. The hill is on my
+left--that is to say the left flank of the army."
+
+"Oh, no, Hart's brigade is beyond. It was ordered up from Drytown during
+the night and directed to hook on to you. Better go and--"
+
+The sentence was unfinished: a lively cannonade had broken out on the
+left, and both officers, followed by their retinues of aides and
+orderlies making a great jingle and clank, rode rapidly toward the spot.
+But they were soon impeded, for they were compelled by the fog to keep
+within sight of the line-of-battle, behind which were swarms of men, all
+in motion across their way. Everywhere the line was assuming a sharper
+and harder definition, as the men sprang to arms and the officers, with
+drawn swords, "dressed" the ranks. Color-bearers unfurled the flags,
+buglers blew the "assembly," hospital attendants appeared with
+stretchers. Field officers mounted and sent their impedimenta to the
+rear in care of negro servants. Back in the ghostly spaces of the forest
+could be heard the rustle and murmur of the reserves, pulling themselves
+together.
+
+Nor was all this preparation vain, for scarcely five minutes had passed
+since Captain Ransome's guns had broken the truce of doubt before the
+whole region was aroar: the enemy had attacked nearly everywhere.
+
+V
+
+HOW SOUNDS CAN FIGHT SHADOWS
+
+Captain Ransome walked up and down behind his guns, which were firing
+rapidly but with steadiness. The gunners worked alertly, but without
+haste or apparent excitement. There was really no reason for excitement;
+it is not much to point a cannon into a fog and fire it. Anybody can do
+as much as that.
+
+The men smiled at their noisy work, performing it with a lessening
+alacrity. They cast curious regards upon their captain, who had now
+mounted the banquette of the fortification and was looking across the
+parapet as if observing the effect of his fire. But the only visible
+effect was the substitution of wide, low-lying sheets of smoke for their
+bulk of fog. Suddenly out of the obscurity burst a great sound of
+cheering, which filled the intervals between the reports of the guns
+with startling distinctness! To the few with leisure and opportunity to
+observe, the sound was inexpressibly strange--so loud, so near, so
+menacing, yet nothing seen! The men who had smiled at their work smiled
+no more, but performed it with a serious and feverish activity.
+
+From his station at the parapet Captain Ransome now saw a great
+multitude of dim gray figures taking shape in the mist below him and
+swarming up the slope. But the work of the guns was now fast and
+furious. They swept the populous declivity with gusts of grape and
+canister, the whirring of which could be heard through the thunder of
+the explosions. In this awful tempest of iron the assailants struggled
+forward foot by foot across their dead, firing into the embrasures,
+reloading, firing again, and at last falling in their turn, a little in
+advance of those who had fallen before. Soon the smoke was dense enough
+to cover all. It settled down upon the attack and, drifting back,
+involved the defense. The gunners could hardly see to serve their
+pieces, and when occasional figures of the enemy appeared upon the
+parapet--having had the good luck to get near enough to it, between two
+embrasures, to be protected from the guns--they looked so unsubstantial
+that it seemed hardly worth while for the few infantrymen to go to work
+upon them with the bayonet and tumble them back into the ditch.
+
+As the commander of a battery in action can find something better to do
+than cracking individual skulls, Captain Ransome had retired from the
+parapet to his proper post in rear of his guns, where he stood with
+folded arms, his bugler beside him. Here, during the hottest of the
+fight, he was approached by Lieutenant Price, who had just sabred a
+daring assailant inside the work. A spirited colloquy ensued between the
+two officers--spirited, at least, on the part of the lieutenant, who
+gesticulated with energy and shouted again and again into his
+commander's ear in the attempt to make himself heard above the infernal
+din of the guns. His gestures, if coolly noted by an actor, would have
+been pronounced to be those of protestation: one would have said that he
+was opposed to the proceedings. Did he wish to surrender?
+
+Captain Ransome listened without a change of countenance or attitude,
+and when the other man had finished his harangue, looked him coldly in
+the eyes and during a seasonable abatement of the uproar said:
+
+"Lieutenant Price, it is not permitted to you to know _anything_. It is
+sufficient that you obey my orders."
+
+The lieutenant went to his post, and the parapet being now apparently
+clear Captain Ransome returned to it to have a look over. As he mounted
+the banquette a man sprang upon the crest, waving a great brilliant
+flag. The captain drew a pistol from his belt and shot him dead. The
+body, pitching forward, hung over the inner edge of the embankment, the
+arms straight downward, both hands still grasping the flag. The man's
+few followers turned and fled down the slope. Looking over the parapet,
+the captain saw no living thing. He observed also that no bullets were
+coming into the work.
+
+He made a sign to the bugler, who sounded the command to cease firing.
+At all other points the action had already ended with a repulse of the
+Confederate attack; with the cessation of this cannonade the silence was
+absolute.
+
+VI
+
+WHY, BEING AFFRONTED BY A, IT IS NOT BEST TO AFFRONT B
+
+General Masterson rode into the redoubt. The men, gathered in groups,
+were talking loudly and gesticulating. They pointed at the dead, running
+from one body to another. They neglected their foul and heated guns and
+forgot to resume their outer clothing. They ran to the parapet and
+looked over, some of them leaping down into the ditch. A score were
+gathered about a flag rigidly held by a dead man.
+
+"Well, my men," said the general cheerily, "you have had a pretty fight
+of it."
+
+They stared; nobody replied; the presence of the great man seemed to
+embarrass and alarm.
+
+Getting no response to his pleasant condescension, the easy-mannered
+officer whistled a bar or two of a popular air, and riding forward to
+the parapet, looked over at the dead. In an instant he had whirled his
+horse about and was spurring along in rear of the guns, his eyes
+everywhere at once. An officer sat on the trail of one of the guns,
+smoking a cigar. As the general dashed up he rose and tranquilly
+saluted.
+
+"Captain Ransome!"--the words fell sharp and harsh, like the clash of
+steel blades--"you have been fighting our own men--our own men, sir; do
+you hear? Hart's brigade!"
+
+"General, I know that."
+
+"You know it--you know that, and you sit here smoking? Oh, damn it,
+Hamilton, I'm losing my temper,"--this to his provost-marshal. "Sir--
+Captain Ransome, be good enough to say--to say why you fought our own
+men."
+
+"That I am unable to say. In my orders that information was withheld."
+
+Apparently the general did not comprehend.
+
+"Who was the aggressor in this affair, you or General Hart?" he asked.
+
+"I was."
+
+"And could you not have known--could you not see, sir, that you were
+attacking our own men?"
+
+The reply was astounding!
+
+"I knew that, general. It appeared to be none of my business."
+
+Then, breaking the dead silence that followed his answer, he said:
+
+"I must refer you to General Cameron."
+
+"General Cameron is dead, sir--as dead as he can be--as dead as any man
+in this army. He lies back yonder under a tree. Do you mean to say that
+he had anything to do with this horrible business?"
+
+Captain Ransome did not reply. Observing the altercation his men had
+gathered about to watch the outcome. They were greatly excited. The fog,
+which had been partly dissipated by the firing, had again closed in so
+darkly about them that they drew more closely together till the judge on
+horseback and the accused standing calmly before him had but a narrow
+space free from intrusion. It was the most informal of courts-martial,
+but all felt that the formal one to follow would but affirm its
+judgment. It had no jurisdiction, but it had the significance of
+prophecy.
+
+"Captain Ransome," the general cried impetuously, but with something in
+his voice that was almost entreaty, "if you can say anything to put a
+better light upon your incomprehensible conduct I beg you will do so."
+
+Having recovered his temper this generous soldier sought for something
+to justify his naturally sympathetic attitude toward a brave man in the
+imminence of a dishonorable death.
+
+"Where is Lieutenant Price?" the captain said.
+
+That officer stood forward, his dark saturnine face looking somewhat
+forbidding under a bloody handkerchief bound about his brow. He
+understood the summons and needed no invitation to speak. He did not
+look at the captain, but addressed the general:
+
+"During the engagement I discovered the state of affairs, and apprised
+the commander of the battery. I ventured to urge that the firing cease.
+I was insulted and ordered to my post."
+
+"Do you know anything of the orders under which I was acting?" asked the
+captain.
+
+"Of any orders under which the commander of the battery was acting," the
+lieutenant continued, still addressing the general, "I know nothing."
+
+Captain Ransome felt his world sink away from his feet. In those cruel
+words he heard the murmur of the centuries breaking upon the shore of
+eternity. He heard the voice of doom; it said, in cold, mechanical, and
+measured tones: "Ready, aim, fire!" and he felt the bullets tear his
+heart to shreds. He heard the sound of the earth upon his coffin and (if
+the good God was so merciful) the song of a bird above his forgotten
+grave. Quietly detaching his sabre from its supports, he handed it up to
+the provost-marshal.
+
+
+
+
+ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN
+
+Captain Graffenreid stood at the head of his company. The regiment was
+not engaged. It formed a part of the front line-of-battle, which
+stretched away to the right with a visible length of nearly two miles
+through the open ground. The left flank was veiled by woods; to the
+right also the line was lost to sight, but it extended many miles. A
+hundred yards in rear was a second line; behind this, the reserve
+brigades and divisions in column. Batteries of artillery occupied the
+spaces between and crowned the low hills. Groups of horsemen--generals
+with their staffs and escorts, and field officers of regiments behind
+the colors--broke the regularity of the lines and columns. Numbers of
+these figures of interest had field-glasses at their eyes and sat
+motionless, stolidly scanning the country in front; others came
+and went at a slow canter, bearing orders. There were squads of
+stretcher-bearers, ambulances, wagon-trains with ammunition, and
+officers' servants in rear of all--of all that was visible--for still in
+rear of these, along the roads, extended for many miles all that vast
+multitude of non-combatants who with their various _impedimenta_ are
+assigned to the inglorious but important duty of supplying the fighters'
+many needs.
+
+An army in line-of-battle awaiting attack, or prepared to deliver it,
+presents strange contrasts. At the front are precision, formality,
+fixity, and silence. Toward the rear these characteristics are less and
+less conspicuous, and finally, in point of space, are lost altogether in
+confusion, motion and noise. The homogeneous becomes heterogeneous.
+Definition is lacking; repose is replaced by an apparently purposeless
+activity; harmony vanishes in hubbub, form in disorder. Commotion
+everywhere and ceaseless unrest. The men who do not fight are never
+ready.
+
+From his position at the right of his company in the front rank, Captain
+Graffenreid had an unobstructed outlook toward the enemy. A half-mile of
+open and nearly level ground lay before him, and beyond it an irregular
+wood, covering a slight acclivity; not a human being anywhere visible.
+He could imagine nothing more peaceful than the appearance of that
+pleasant landscape with its long stretches of brown fields over which
+the atmosphere was beginning to quiver in the heat of the morning sun.
+Not a sound came from forest or field--not even the barking of a dog or
+the crowing of a cock at the half-seen plantation house on the crest
+among the trees. Yet every man in those miles of men knew that he and
+death were face to face.
+
+Captain Graffenreid had never in his life seen an armed enemy, and the
+war in which his regiment was one of the first to take the field was two
+years old. He had had the rare advantage of a military education, and
+when his comrades had marched to the front he had been detached for
+administrative service at the capital of his State, where it was thought
+that he could be most useful. Like a bad soldier he protested, and like
+a good one obeyed. In close official and personal relations with the
+governor of his State, and enjoying his confidence and favor, he had
+firmly refused promotion and seen his juniors elevated above him. Death
+had been busy in his distant regiment; vacancies among the field
+officers had occurred again and again; but from a chivalrous feeling
+that war's rewards belonged of right to those who bore the storm and
+stress of battle he had held his humble rank and generously advanced the
+fortunes of others. His silent devotion to principle had conquered at
+last: he had been relieved of his hateful duties and ordered to the
+front, and now, untried by fire, stood in the van of battle in command
+of a company of hardy veterans, to whom he had been only a name, and
+that name a by-word. By none--not even by those of his brother officers
+in whose favor he had waived his rights--was his devotion to duty
+understood. They were too busy to be just; he was looked upon as one who
+had shirked his duty, until forced unwillingly into the field. Too proud
+to explain, yet not too insensible to feel, he could only endure and
+hope.
+
+Of all the Federal Army on that summer morning none had accepted battle
+more joyously than Anderton Graffenreid. His spirit was buoyant, his
+faculties were riotous. He was in a state of mental exaltation and
+scarcely could endure the enemy's tardiness in advancing to the attack.
+To him this was opportunity--for the result he cared nothing. Victory or
+defeat, as God might will; in one or in the other he should prove
+himself a soldier and a hero; he should vindicate his right to the
+respect of his men and the companionship of his brother officers--to the
+consideration of his superiors. How his heart leaped in his breast as
+the bugle sounded the stirring notes of the "assembly"! With what a
+light tread, scarcely conscious of the earth beneath his feet, he strode
+forward at the head of his company, and how exultingly he noted the
+tactical dispositions which placed his regiment in the front line! And
+if perchance some memory came to him of a pair of dark eyes that might
+take on a tenderer light in reading the account of that day's doings,
+who shall blame him for the unmartial thought or count it a debasement
+of soldierly ardor?
+
+Suddenly, from the forest a half-mile in front--apparently from among
+the upper branches of the trees, but really from the ridge beyond--rose
+a tall column of white smoke. A moment later came a deep, jarring
+explosion, followed--almost attended--by a hideous rushing sound that
+seemed to leap forward across the intervening space with inconceivable
+rapidity, rising from whisper to roar with too quick a gradation for
+attention to note the successive stages of its horrible progression! A
+visible tremor ran along the lines of men; all were startled into
+motion. Captain Graffenreid dodged and threw up his hands to one side of
+his head, palms outward.
+
+As he did so he heard a keen, ringing report, and saw on a hillside
+behind the line a fierce roll of smoke and dust--the shell's explosion.
+It had passed a hundred feet to his left! He heard, or fancied he heard,
+a low, mocking laugh and turning in the direction whence it came saw the
+eyes of his first lieutenant fixed upon him with an unmistakable look of
+amusement. He looked along the line of faces in the front ranks. The men
+were laughing. At him? The thought restored the color to his bloodless
+face--restored too much of it. His cheeks burned with a fever of shame.
+
+The enemy's shot was not answered: the officer in command at that
+exposed part of the line had evidently no desire to provoke a cannonade.
+For the forbearance Captain Graffenreid was conscious of a sense of
+gratitude. He had not known that the flight of a projectile was a
+phenomenon of so appalling character. His conception of war had already
+undergone a profound change, and he was conscious that his new feeling
+was manifesting itself in visible perturbation. His blood was boiling in
+his veins; he had a choking sensation and felt that if he had a command
+to give it would be inaudible, or at least unintelligible. The hand in
+which he held his sword trembled; the other moved automatically,
+clutching at various parts of his clothing. He found a difficulty in
+standing still and fancied that his men observed it. Was it fear? He
+feared it was.
+
+From somewhere away to the right came, as the wind served, a low,
+intermittent murmur like that of ocean in a storm--like that of a
+distant railway train--like that of wind among the pines--three sounds
+so nearly alike that the ear, unaided by the judgment, cannot
+distinguish them one from another. The eyes of the troops were drawn in
+that direction; the mounted officers turned their field-glasses that
+way. Mingled with the sound was an irregular throbbing. He thought it,
+at first, the beating of his fevered blood in his ears; next, the
+distant tapping of a bass drum.
+
+"The ball is opened on the right flank," said an officer.
+
+Captain Graffenreid understood: the sounds were musketry and artillery.
+He nodded and tried to smile. There was apparently nothing infectious in
+the smile.
+
+Presently a light line of blue smoke-puffs broke out along the edge of
+the wood in front, succeeded by a crackle of rifles. There were keen,
+sharp hissings in the air, terminating abruptly with a thump near by.
+The man at Captain Graffenreid's side dropped his rifle; his knees gave
+way and he pitched awkwardly forward, falling upon his face. Somebody
+shouted "Lie down!" and the dead man was hardly distinguishable from the
+living. It looked as if those few rifle-shots had slain ten thousand
+men. Only the field officers remained erect; their concession to the
+emergency consisted in dismounting and sending their horses to the
+shelter of the low hills immediately in rear.
+
+Captain Graffenreid lay alongside the dead man, from beneath whose
+breast flowed a little rill of blood. It had a faint, sweetish odor that
+sickened him. The face was crushed into the earth and flattened. It
+looked yellow already, and was repulsive. Nothing suggested the glory of
+a soldier's death nor mitigated the loathsomeness of the incident. He
+could not turn his back upon the body without facing away from his
+company.
+
+He fixed his eyes upon the forest, where all again was silent. He tried
+to imagine what was going on there--the lines of troops forming to
+attack, the guns being pushed forward by hand to the edge of the open.
+He fancied he could see their black muzzles protruding from the
+undergrowth, ready to deliver their storm of missiles--such missiles as
+the one whose shriek had so unsettled his nerves. The distension of his
+eyes became painful; a mist seemed to gather before them; he could no
+longer see across the field, yet would not withdraw his gaze lest he see
+the dead man at his side.
+
+The fire of battle was not now burning very brightly in this warrior's
+soul. From inaction had come introspection. He sought rather to analyze
+his feelings than distinguish himself by courage and devotion. The
+result was profoundly disappointing. He covered his face with his hands
+and groaned aloud.
+
+The hoarse murmur of battle grew more and more distinct upon the right;
+the murmur had, indeed, become a roar, the throbbing, a thunder. The
+sounds had worked round obliquely to the front; evidently the enemy's
+left was being driven back, and the propitious moment to move against
+the salient angle of his line would soon arrive. The silence and mystery
+in front were ominous; all felt that they boded evil to the assailants.
+
+Behind the prostrate lines sounded the hoofbeats of galloping horses;
+the men turned to look. A dozen staff officers were riding to the
+various brigade and regimental commanders, who had remounted. A moment
+more and there was a chorus of voices, all uttering out of time the same
+words--"Attention, battalion!" The men sprang to their feet and were
+aligned by the company commanders. They awaited the word "forward"--
+awaited, too, with beating hearts and set teeth the gusts of lead and
+iron that were to smite them at their first movement in obedience to
+that word. The word was not given; the tempest did not break out. The
+delay was hideous, maddening! It unnerved like a respite at the
+guillotine.
+
+Captain Graffenreid stood at the head of his company, the dead man at
+his feet. He heard the battle on the right--rattle and crash of
+musketry, ceaseless thunder of cannon, desultory cheers of invisible
+combatants. He marked ascending clouds of smoke from distant forests. He
+noted the sinister silence of the forest in front. These contrasting
+extremes affected the whole range of his sensibilities. The strain upon
+his nervous organization was insupportable. He grew hot and cold by
+turns. He panted like a dog, and then forgot to breathe until reminded
+by vertigo.
+
+Suddenly he grew calm. Glancing downward, his eyes had fallen upon his
+naked sword, as he held it, point to earth. Foreshortened to his view,
+it resembled somewhat, he thought, the short heavy blade of the ancient
+Roman. The fancy was full of suggestion, malign, fateful, heroic!
+
+The sergeant in the rear rank, immediately behind Captain Graffenreid,
+now observed a strange sight. His attention drawn by an uncommon
+movement made by the captain--a sudden reaching forward of the hands and
+their energetic withdrawal, throwing the elbows out, as in pulling an
+oar--he saw spring from between the officer's shoulders a bright point
+of metal which prolonged itself outward, nearly a half-arm's length--a
+blade! It was faintly streaked with crimson, and its point approached so
+near to the sergeant's breast, and with so quick a movement, that he
+shrank backward in alarm. That moment Captain Graffenreid pitched
+heavily forward upon the dead man and died.
+
+A week later the major-general commanding the left corps of the Federal
+Army submitted the following official report:
+
+"SIR: I have the honor to report, with regard to the action of the 19th
+inst, that owing to the enemy's withdrawal from my front to reinforce
+his beaten left, my command was not seriously engaged. My loss was as
+follows: Killed, one officer, one man."
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE THURSTON
+
+THREE INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A MAN
+
+George Thurston was a first lieutenant and aide-de-camp on the staff of
+Colonel Brough, commanding a Federal brigade. Colonel Brough was only
+temporarily in command, as senior colonel, the brigadier-general having
+been severely wounded and granted a leave of absence to recover.
+Lieutenant Thurston was, I believe, of Colonel Brough's regiment, to
+which, with his chief, he would naturally have been relegated had he
+lived till our brigade commander's recovery. The aide whose place
+Thurston took had been killed in battle; Thurston's advent among us was
+the only change in the _personnel_ of our staff consequent upon the
+change in commanders. We did not like him; he was unsocial. This,
+however, was more observed by others than by me. Whether in camp or on
+the march, in barracks, in tents, or _en bivouac_, my duties as
+topographical engineer kept me working like a beaver--all day in the
+saddle and half the night at my drawing-table, platting my surveys. It
+was hazardous work; the nearer to the enemy's lines I could penetrate,
+the more valuable were my field notes and the resulting maps. It was a
+business in which the lives of men counted as nothing against the chance
+of defining a road or sketching a bridge. Whole squadrons of cavalry
+escort had sometimes to be sent thundering against a powerful infantry
+outpost in order that the brief time between the charge and the
+inevitable retreat might be utilized in sounding a ford or determining
+the point of intersection of two roads.
+
+In some of the dark corners of England and Wales they have an immemorial
+custom of "beating the bounds" of the parish. On a certain day of the
+year the whole population turns out and travels in procession from one
+landmark to another on the boundary line. At the most important points
+lads are soundly beaten with rods to make them remember the place in
+after life. They become authorities. Our frequent engagements with the
+Confederate outposts, patrols, and scouting parties had, incidentally,
+the same educating value; they fixed in my memory a vivid and apparently
+imperishable picture of the locality--a picture serving instead of
+accurate field notes, which, indeed, it was not always convenient to
+take, with carbines cracking, sabers clashing, and horses plunging all
+about. These spirited encounters were observations entered in red.
+
+One morning as I set out at the head of my escort on an expedition of
+more than the usual hazard Lieutenant Thurston rode up alongside and
+asked if I had any objection to his accompanying me, the colonel
+commanding having given him permission.
+
+"None whatever," I replied rather gruffly; "but in what capacity will
+you go? You are not a topographical engineer, and Captain Burling
+commands my escort."
+
+"I will go as a spectator," he said. Removing his sword-belt and taking
+the pistols from his holsters he handed them to his servant, who took
+them back to headquarters. I realized the brutality of my remark, but
+not clearly seeing my way to an apology, said nothing.
+
+That afternoon we encountered a whole regiment of the enemy's cavalry in
+line and a field-piece that dominated a straight mile of the turnpike by
+which we had approached. My escort fought deployed in the woods on both
+sides, but Thurston remained in the center of the road, which at
+intervals of a few seconds was swept by gusts of grape and canister that
+tore the air wide open as they passed. He had dropped the rein on the
+neck of his horse and sat bolt upright in the saddle, with folded arms.
+Soon he was down, his horse torn to pieces. From the side of the road,
+my pencil and field book idle, my duty forgotten, I watched him slowly
+disengaging himself from the wreck and rising. At that instant, the
+cannon having ceased firing, a burly Confederate trooper on a spirited
+horse dashed like a thunderbolt down the road with drawn saber. Thurston
+saw him coming, drew himself up to his full height, and again folded his
+arms. He was too brave to retreat before the word, and my uncivil words
+had disarmed him. He was a spectator. Another moment and he would have
+been split like a mackerel, but a blessed bullet tumbled his assailant
+into the dusty road so near that the impetus sent the body rolling to
+Thurston's feet. That evening, while platting my hasty survey, I found
+time to frame an apology, which I think took the rude, primitive form of
+a confession that I had spoken like a malicious idiot.
+
+A few weeks later a part of our army made an assault upon the enemy's
+left. The attack, which was made upon an unknown position and across
+unfamiliar ground, was led by our brigade. The ground was so broken and
+the underbrush so thick that all mounted officers and men were compelled
+to fight on foot--the brigade commander and his staff included. In the
+_melee_ Thurston was parted from the rest of us, and we found him,
+horribly wounded, only when we had taken the enemy's last defense. He
+was some months in hospital at Nashville, Tennessee, but finally
+rejoined us. He said little about his misadventure, except that he had
+been bewildered and had strayed into the enemy's lines and been shot
+down; but from one of his captors, whom we in turn had captured, we
+learned the particulars. "He came walking right upon us as we lay in
+line," said this man. "A whole company of us instantly sprang up and
+leveled our rifles at his breast, some of them almost touching him.
+'Throw down that sword and surrender, you damned Yank!' shouted some one
+in authority. The fellow ran his eyes along the line of rifle barrels,
+folded his arms across his breast, his right hand still clutching his
+sword, and deliberately replied, 'I will not.' If we had all fired he
+would have been torn to shreds. Some of us didn't. I didn't, for one;
+nothing could have induced me."
+
+When one is tranquilly looking death in the eye and refusing him any
+concession one naturally has a good opinion of one's self. I don't know
+if it was this feeling that in Thurston found expression in a stiffish
+attitude and folded arms; at the mess table one day, in his absence,
+another explanation was suggested by our quartermaster, an irreclaimable
+stammerer when the wine was in: "It's h--is w--ay of m-m-mastering a
+c-c-consti-t-tu-tional t-tendency to r--un aw--ay."
+
+"What!" I flamed out, indignantly rising; "you intimate that Thurston is
+a coward--and in his absence?"
+
+"If he w--ere a cow--wow-ard h--e w--wouldn't t-try to m-m-master it;
+and if he w--ere p-present I w--wouldn't d-d-dare to d-d-discuss it,"
+was the mollifying reply.
+
+This intrepid man, George Thurston, died an ignoble death. The brigade
+was in camp, with headquarters in a grove of immense trees. To an upper
+branch of one of these a venturesome climber had attached the two ends
+of a long rope and made a swing with a length of not less than one
+hundred feet. Plunging downward from a height of fifty feet, along the
+arc of a circle with such a radius, soaring to an equal altitude,
+pausing for one breathless instant, then sweeping dizzily backward--no
+one who has not tried it can conceive the terrors of such sport to the
+novice. Thurston came out of his tent one day and asked for instruction
+in the mystery of propelling the swing--the art of rising and sitting,
+which every boy has mastered. In a few moments he had acquired the trick
+and was swinging higher than the most experienced of us had dared. We
+shuddered to look at his fearful flights.
+
+"St-t-top him," said the quartermaster, snailing lazily along from the
+mess-tent, where he had been lunching; "h--e d-doesn't know that if h--e
+g-g-goes c-clear over h--e'll w--ind up the sw--ing."
+
+With such energy was that strong man cannonading himself through the air
+that at each extremity of his increasing arc his body, standing in the
+swing, was almost horizontal. Should he once pass above the level of the
+rope's attachment he would be lost; the rope would slacken and he would
+fall vertically to a point as far below as he had gone above, and then
+the sudden tension of the rope would wrest it from his hands. All saw
+the peril--all cried out to him to desist, and gesticulated at him as,
+indistinct and with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot in flight, he
+swept past us through the lower reaches of his hideous oscillation. A
+woman standing at a little distance away fainted and fell unobserved.
+Men from the camp of a regiment near by ran in crowds to see, all
+shouting. Suddenly, as Thurston was on his upward curve, the shouts all
+ceased.
+
+Thurston and the swing had parted--that is all that can be known; both
+hands at once had released the rope. The impetus of the light swing
+exhausted, it was falling back; the man's momentum was carrying him,
+almost erect, upward and forward, no longer in his arc, but with an
+outward curve. It could have been but an instant, yet it seemed an age.
+I cried out, or thought I cried out: "My God! will he never stop going
+up?" He passed close to the branch of a tree. I remember a feeling of
+delight as I thought he would clutch it and save himself. I speculated
+on the possibility of it sustaining his weight. He passed above it, and
+from my point of view was sharply outlined against the blue. At this
+distance of many years I can distinctly recall that image of a man in
+the sky, its head erect, its feet close together, its hands--I do not
+see its hands. All at once, with astonishing suddenness and rapidity, it
+turns clear over and pitches downward. There is another cry from the
+crowd, which has rushed instinctively forward. The man has become merely
+a whirling object, mostly legs. Then there is an indescribable sound--
+the sound of an impact that shakes the earth, and these men, familiar
+with death in its most awful aspects, turn sick. Many walk unsteadily
+away from the spot; others support themselves against the trunks of
+trees or sit at the roots. Death has taken an unfair advantage; he has
+struck with an unfamiliar weapon; he has executed a new and disquieting
+stratagem. We did not know that he had so ghastly resources,
+possibilities of terror so dismal.
+
+Thurston's body lay on its back. One leg, bent beneath, was broken above
+the knee and the bone driven into the earth. The abdomen had burst; the
+bowels protruded. The neck was broken.
+
+The arms were folded tightly across the breast.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOCKING-BIRD
+
+The time, a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of 1861. The
+place, a forest's heart in the mountain region of southwestern Virginia.
+Private Grayrock of the Federal Army is discovered seated comfortably at
+the root of a great pine tree, against which he leans, his legs extended
+straight along the ground, his rifle lying across his thighs, his hands
+(clasped in order that they may not fall away to his sides) resting upon
+the barrel of the weapon. The contact of the back of his head with the
+tree has pushed his cap downward over his eyes, almost concealing them;
+one seeing him would say that he slept.
+
+Private Grayrock did not sleep; to have done so would have imperiled the
+interests of the United States, for he was a long way outside the lines
+and subject to capture or death at the hands of the enemy. Moreover, he
+was in a frame of mind unfavorable to repose. The cause of his
+perturbation of spirit was this: during the previous night he had served
+on the picket-guard, and had been posted as a sentinel in this very
+forest. The night was clear, though moonless, but in the gloom of the
+wood the darkness was deep. Grayrock's post was at a considerable
+distance from those to right and left, for the pickets had been thrown
+out a needless distance from the camp, making the line too long for the
+force detailed to occupy it. The war was young, and military camps
+entertained the error that while sleeping they were better protected by
+thin lines a long way out toward the enemy than by thicker ones close
+in. And surely they needed as long notice as possible of an enemy's
+approach, for they were at that time addicted to the practice of
+undressing--than which nothing could be more unsoldierly. On the morning
+of the memorable 6th of April, at Shiloh, many of Grant's men when
+spitted on Confederate bayonets were as naked as civilians; but it
+should be allowed that this was not because of any defect in their
+picket line. Their error was of another sort: they had no pickets. This
+is perhaps a vain digression. I should not care to undertake to interest
+the reader in the fate of an army; what we have here to consider is that
+of Private Grayrock.
+
+For two hours after he had been left at his lonely post that Saturday
+night he stood stock-still, leaning against the trunk of a large tree,
+staring into the darkness in his front and trying to recognize known
+objects; for he had been posted at the same spot during the day. But all
+was now different; he saw nothing in detail, but only groups of things,
+whose shapes, not observed when there was something more of them to
+observe, were now unfamiliar. They seemed not to have been there before.
+A landscape that is all trees and undergrowth, moreover, lacks
+definition, is confused and without accentuated points upon which
+attention can gain a foothold. Add the gloom of a moonless night, and
+something more than great natural intelligence and a city education is
+required to preserve one's knowledge of direction. And that is how it
+occurred that Private Grayrock, after vigilantly watching the spaces in
+his front and then imprudently executing a circumspection of his whole
+dimly visible environment (silently walking around his tree to
+accomplish it) lost his bearings and seriously impaired his usefulness
+as a sentinel. Lost at his post--unable to say in which direction to
+look for an enemy's approach, and in which lay the sleeping camp for
+whose security he was accountable with his life--conscious, too, of many
+another awkward feature of the situation and of considerations affecting
+his own safety, Private Grayrock was profoundly disquieted. Nor was he
+given time to recover his tranquillity, for almost at the moment that he
+realized his awkward predicament he heard a stir of leaves and a snap of
+fallen twigs, and turning with a stilled heart in the direction whence
+it came, saw in the gloom the indistinct outlines of a human figure.
+
+"Halt!" shouted Private Grayrock, peremptorily as in duty bound, backing
+up the command with the sharp metallic snap of his cocking rifle--"who
+goes there?"
+
+There was no answer; at least there was an instant's hesitation, and the
+answer, if it came, was lost in the report of the sentinel's rifle. In
+the silence of the night and the forest the sound was deafening, and
+hardly had it died away when it was repeated by the pieces of the
+pickets to right and left, a sympathetic fusillade. For two hours every
+unconverted civilian of them had been evolving enemies from his
+imagination, and peopling the woods in his front with them, and
+Grayrock's shot had started the whole encroaching host into visible
+existence. Having fired, all retreated, breathless, to the reserves--all
+but Grayrock, who did not know in what direction to retreat. When, no
+enemy appearing, the roused camp two miles away had undressed and got
+itself into bed again, and the picket line was cautiously
+re-established, he was discovered bravely holding his ground, and was
+complimented by the officer of the guard as the one soldier of that
+devoted band who could rightly be considered the moral equivalent of
+that uncommon unit of value, "a whoop in hell."
+
+In the mean time, however, Grayrock had made a close but unavailing
+search for the mortal part of the intruder at whom he had fired, and
+whom he had a marksman's intuitive sense of having hit; for he was one
+of those born experts who shoot without aim by an instinctive sense of
+direction, and are nearly as dangerous by night as by day. During a full
+half of his twenty-four years he had been a terror to the targets of all
+the shooting-galleries in three cities. Unable now to produce his dead
+game he had the discretion to hold his tongue, and was glad to observe
+in his officer and comrades the natural assumption that not having run
+away he had seen nothing hostile. His "honorable mention" had been
+earned by not running away anyhow.
+
+Nevertheless, Private Grayrock was far from satisfied with the night's
+adventure, and when the next day he made some fair enough pretext to
+apply for a pass to go outside the lines, and the general commanding
+promptly granted it in recognition of his bravery the night before, he
+passed out at the point where that had been displayed. Telling the
+sentinel then on duty there that he had lost something,--which was true
+enough--he renewed the search for the person whom he supposed himself to
+have shot, and whom if only wounded he hoped to trail by the blood. He
+was no more successful by daylight than he had been in the darkness, and
+after covering a wide area and boldly penetrating a long distance into
+"the Confederacy" he gave up the search, somewhat fatigued, seated
+himself at the root of the great pine tree, where we have seen him, and
+indulged his disappointment.
+
+It is not to be inferred that Grayrock's was the chagrin of a cruel
+nature balked of its bloody deed. In the clear large eyes, finely
+wrought lips, and broad forehead of that young man one could read quite
+another story, and in point of fact his character was a singularly
+felicitous compound of boldness and sensibility, courage and conscience.
+
+"I find myself disappointed," he said to himself, sitting there at the
+bottom of the golden haze submerging the forest like a subtler sea--
+"disappointed in failing to discover a fellow-man dead by my hand! Do I
+then really wish that I had taken life in the performance of a duty as
+well performed without? What more could I wish? If any danger
+threatened, my shot averted it; that is what I was there to do. No, I am
+glad indeed if no human life was needlessly extinguished by me. But I am
+in a false position. I have suffered myself to be complimented by my
+officers and envied by my comrades. The camp is ringing with praise of
+my courage. That is not just; I know myself courageous, but this praise
+is for specific acts which I did not perform, or performed--otherwise.
+It is believed that I remained at my post bravely, without firing,
+whereas it was I who began the fusillade, and I did not retreat in the
+general alarm because bewildered. What, then, shall I do? Explain that I
+saw an enemy and fired? They have all said that of themselves, yet none
+believes it. Shall I tell a truth which, discrediting my courage, will
+have the effect of a lie? Ugh! it is an ugly business altogether. I wish
+to God I could find my man!"
+
+And so wishing, Private Grayrock, overcome at last by the languor of the
+afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects droning and prosing
+in certain fragrant shrubs, so far forgot the interests of the United
+States as to fall asleep and expose himself to capture. And sleeping he
+dreamed.
+
+He thought himself a boy, living in a far, fair land by the border of a
+great river upon which the tall steamboats moved grandly up and down
+beneath their towering evolutions of black smoke, which announced them
+long before they had rounded the bends and marked their movements when
+miles out of sight. With him always, at his side as he watched them, was
+one to whom he gave his heart and soul in love--a twin brother. Together
+they strolled along the banks of the stream; together explored the
+fields lying farther away from it, and gathered pungent mints and sticks
+of fragrant sassafras in the hills overlooking all--beyond which lay the
+Realm of Conjecture, and from which, looking southward across the great
+river, they caught glimpses of the Enchanted Land. Hand in hand and
+heart in heart they two, the only children of a widowed mother, walked
+in paths of light through valleys of peace, seeing new things under a
+new sun. And through all the golden days floated one unceasing sound--
+the rich, thrilling melody of a mocking-bird in a cage by the cottage
+door. It pervaded and possessed all the spiritual intervals of the
+dream, like a musical benediction. The joyous bird was always in song;
+its infinitely various notes seemed to flow from its throat, effortless,
+in bubbles and rills at each heart-beat, like the waters of a pulsing
+spring. That fresh, clear melody seemed, indeed, the spirit of the
+scene, the meaning and interpretation to sense of the mysteries of life
+and love.
+
+But there came a time when the days of the dream grew dark with sorrow
+in a rain of tears. The good mother was dead, the meadowside home by the
+great river was broken up, and the brothers were parted between two of
+their kinsmen. William (the dreamer) went to live in a populous city in
+the Realm of Conjecture, and John, crossing the river into the Enchanted
+Land, was taken to a distant region whose people in their lives and ways
+were said to be strange and wicked. To him, in the distribution of the
+dead mother's estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value--the
+mocking-bird. They could be divided, but it could not, so it was carried
+away into the strange country, and the world of William knew it no more
+forever. Yet still through the aftertime of his loneliness its song
+filled all the dream, and seemed always sounding in his ear and in his
+heart.
+
+The kinsmen who had adopted the boys were enemies, holding no
+communication. For a time letters full of boyish bravado and boastful
+narratives of the new and larger experience--grotesque descriptions of
+their widening lives and the new worlds they had conquered--passed
+between them; but these gradually became less frequent, and with
+William's removal to another and greater city ceased altogether. But
+ever through it all ran the song of the mocking-bird, and when the
+dreamer opened his eyes and stared through the vistas of the pine forest
+the cessation of its music first apprised him that he was awake.
+
+The sun was low and red in the west; the level rays projected from the
+trunk of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing the golden haze to
+eastward until light and shade were blended in undistinguishable blue.
+
+Private Grayrock rose to his feet, looked cautiously about him,
+shouldered his rifle and set off toward camp. He had gone perhaps a
+half-mile, and was passing a thicket of laurel, when a bird rose from
+the midst of it and perching on the branch of a tree above, poured from
+its joyous breast so inexhaustible floods of song as but one of all
+God's creatures can utter in His praise. There was little in that--it
+was only to open the bill and breathe; yet the man stopped as if struck
+--stopped and let fall his rifle, looked upward at the bird, covered his
+eyes with his hands and wept like a child! For the moment he was,
+indeed, a child, in spirit and in memory, dwelling again by the great
+river, over-against the Enchanted Land! Then with an effort of the will
+he pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning
+himself for an idiot strode on. Passing an opening that reached into the
+heart of the little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the
+earth, its arms all abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot
+of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and
+backward, lay the image of himself!--the body of John Grayrock, dead of
+a gunshot wound, and still warm! He had found his man.
+
+As the unfortunate soldier knelt beside that masterwork of civil war the
+shrilling bird upon the bough overhead stilled her song and, flushed
+with sunset's crimson glory, glided silently away through the solemn
+spaces of the wood. At roll-call that evening in the Federal camp the
+name William Grayrock brought no response, nor ever again there-after.
+
+
+
+
+
+CIVILIANS
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OUT OF THE NOSE
+
+At the intersection of two certain streets in that part of San Francisco
+known by the rather loosely applied name of North Beach, is a vacant
+lot, which is rather more nearly level than is usually the case with
+lots, vacant or otherwise, in that region. Immediately at the back of
+it, to the south, however, the ground slopes steeply upward, the
+acclivity broken by three terraces cut into the soft rock. It is a place
+for goats and poor persons, several families of each class having
+occupied it jointly and amicably "from the foundation of the city." One
+of the humble habitations of the lowest terrace is noticeable for its
+rude resemblance to the human face, or rather to such a simulacrum of it
+as a boy might cut out of a hollowed pumpkin, meaning no offense to his
+race. The eyes are two circular windows, the nose is a door, the mouth
+an aperture caused by removal of a board below. There are no doorsteps.
+As a face, this house is too large; as a dwelling, too small. The blank,
+unmeaning stare of its lidless and browless eyes is uncanny.
+
+Sometimes a man steps out of the nose, turns, passes the place where the
+right ear should be and making his way through the throng of children
+and goats obstructing the narrow walk between his neighbors' doors and
+the edge of the terrace gains the street by descending a flight of
+rickety stairs. Here he pauses to consult his watch and the stranger who
+happens to pass wonders why such a man as that can care what is the
+hour. Longer observations would show that the time of day is an
+important element in the man's movements, for it is at precisely two
+o'clock in the afternoon that he comes forth 365 times in every year.
+
+Having satisfied himself that he has made no mistake in the hour he
+replaces the watch and walks rapidly southward up the street two
+squares, turns to the right and as he approaches the next corner fixes
+his eyes on an upper window in a three-story building across the way.
+This is a somewhat dingy structure, originally of red brick and now
+gray. It shows the touch of age and dust. Built for a dwelling, it is
+now a factory. I do not know what is made there; the things that are
+commonly made in a factory, I suppose. I only know that at two o'clock
+in the afternoon of every day but Sunday it is full of activity and
+clatter; pulsations of some great engine shake it and there are
+recurrent screams of wood tormented by the saw. At the window on which
+the man fixes an intensely expectant gaze nothing ever appears; the
+glass, in truth, has such a coating of dust that it has long ceased to
+be transparent. The man looks at it without stopping; he merely keeps
+turning his head more and more backward as he leaves the building
+behind. Passing along to the next corner, he turns to the left, goes
+round the block, and comes back till he reaches the point diagonally
+across the street from the factory--point on his former course, which he
+then retraces, looking frequently backward over his right shoulder at
+the window while it is in sight. For many years he has not been known to
+vary his route nor to introduce a single innovation into his action. In
+a quarter of an hour he is again at the mouth of his dwelling, and a
+woman, who has for some time been standing in the nose, assists him to
+enter. He is seen no more until two o'clock the next day. The woman is
+his wife. She supports herself and him by washing for the poor people
+among whom they live, at rates which destroy Chinese and domestic
+competition.
+
+This man is about fifty-seven years of age, though he looks greatly
+older. His hair is dead white. He wears no beard, and is always newly
+shaven. His hands are clean, his nails well kept. In the matter of dress
+he is distinctly superior to his position, as indicated by his
+surroundings and the business of his wife. He is, indeed, very neatly,
+if not quite fashionably, clad. His silk hat has a date no earlier than
+the year before the last, and his boots, scrupulously polished, are
+innocent of patches. I am told that the suit which he wears during his
+daily excursions of fifteen minutes is not the one that he wears at
+home. Like everything else that he has, this is provided and kept in
+repair by the wife, and is renewed as frequently as her scanty means
+permit.
+
+Thirty years ago John Hardshaw and his wife lived on Rincon Hill in one
+of the finest residences of that once aristocratic quarter. He had once
+been a physician, but having inherited a considerable estate from his
+father concerned himself no more about the ailments of his
+fellow-creatures and found as much work as he cared for in managing his
+own affairs. Both he and his wife were highly cultivated persons, and
+their house was frequented by a small set of such men and women as
+persons of their tastes would think worth knowing. So far as these knew,
+Mr. and Mrs. Hardshaw lived happily together; certainly the wife was
+devoted to her handsome and accomplished husband and exceedingly proud
+of him.
+
+Among their acquaintances were the Barwells--man, wife and two young
+children--of Sacramento. Mr. Barwell was a civil and mining engineer,
+whose duties took him much from home and frequently to San Francisco. On
+these occasions his wife commonly accompanied him and passed much of her
+time at the house of her friend, Mrs. Hardshaw, always with her two
+children, of whom Mrs. Hardshaw, childless herself, grew fond.
+Unluckily, her husband grew equally fond of their mother--a good deal
+fonder. Still more unluckily, that attractive lady was less wise than
+weak.
+
+At about three o'clock one autumn morning Officer No. 13 of the
+Sacramento police saw a man stealthily leaving the rear entrance of a
+gentleman's residence and promptly arrested him. The man--who wore a
+slouch hat and shaggy overcoat--offered the policeman one hundred, then
+five hundred, then one thousand dollars to be released. As he had less
+than the first mentioned sum on his person the officer treated his
+proposal with virtuous contempt. Before reaching the station the
+prisoner agreed to give him a check for ten thousand dollars and remain
+ironed in the willows along the river bank until it should be paid. As
+this only provoked new derision he would say no more, merely giving an
+obviously fictitious name. When he was searched at the station nothing
+of value was found on him but a miniature portrait of Mrs. Barwell--the
+lady of the house at which he was caught. The case was set with costly
+diamonds; and something in the quality of the man's linen sent a pang of
+unavailing regret through the severely incorruptible bosom of Officer
+No. 13. There was nothing about the prisoner's clothing nor person to
+identify him and he was booked for burglary under the name that he had
+given, the honorable name of John K. Smith. The K. was an inspiration
+upon which, doubtless, he greatly prided himself.
+
+In the mean time the mysterious disappearance of John Hardshaw was
+agitating the gossips of Rincon Hill in San Francisco, and was even
+mentioned in one of the newspapers. It did not occur to the lady whom
+that journal considerately described as his "widow," to look for him in
+the city prison at Sacramento--a town which he was not known ever to
+have visited. As John K. Smith he was arraigned and, waiving
+examination, committed for trial.
+
+About two weeks before the trial, Mrs. Hardshaw, accidentally learning
+that her husband was held in Sacramento under an assumed name on a
+charge of burglary, hastened to that city without daring to mention the
+matter to any one and presented herself at the prison, asking for an
+interview with her husband, John K. Smith. Haggard and ill with anxiety,
+wearing a plain traveling wrap which covered her from neck to foot, and
+in which she had passed the night on the steamboat, too anxious to
+sleep, she hardly showed for what she was, but her manner pleaded for
+her more strongly than anything that she chose to say in evidence of her
+right to admittance. She was permitted to see him alone.
+
+What occurred during that distressing interview has never transpired;
+but later events prove that Hardshaw had found means to subdue her will
+to his own. She left the prison, a broken-hearted woman, refusing to
+answer a single question, and returning to her desolate home renewed, in
+a half-hearted way, her inquiries for her missing husband. A week later
+she was herself missing: she had "gone back to the States"--nobody knew
+any more than that.
+
+On his trial the prisoner pleaded guilty--"by advice of his counsel," so
+his counsel said. Nevertheless, the judge, in whose mind several unusual
+circumstances had created a doubt, insisted on the district attorney
+placing Officer No. 13 on the stand, and the deposition of Mrs. Barwell,
+who was too ill to attend, was read to the jury. It was very brief: she
+knew nothing of the matter except that the likeness of herself was her
+property, and had, she thought, been left on the parlor table when she
+had retired on the night of the arrest. She had intended it as a present
+to her husband, then and still absent in Europe on business for a mining
+company.
+
+This witness's manner when making the deposition at her residence was
+afterward described by the district attorney as most extraordinary.
+Twice she had refused to testify, and once, when the deposition lacked
+nothing but her signature, she had caught it from the clerk's hands and
+torn it in pieces. She had called her children to the bedside and
+embraced them with streaming eyes, then suddenly sending them from the
+room, she verified her statement by oath and signature, and fainted--
+"slick away," said the district attorney. It was at that time that her
+physician, arriving upon the scene, took in the situation at a glance
+and grasping the representative of the law by the collar chucked him
+into the street and kicked his assistant after him. The insulted majesty
+of the law was not vindicated; the victim of the indignity did not even
+mention anything of all this in court. He was ambitious to win his case,
+and the circumstances of the taking of that deposition were not such as
+would give it weight if related; and after all, the man on trial had
+committed an offense against the law's majesty only less heinous than
+that of the irascible physician.
+
+By suggestion of the judge the jury rendered a verdict of guilty; there
+was nothing else to do, and the prisoner was sentenced to the
+penitentiary for three years. His counsel, who had objected to nothing
+and had made no plea for lenity--had, in fact, hardly said a word--wrung
+his client's hand and left the room. It was obvious to the whole bar
+that he had been engaged only to prevent the court from appointing
+counsel who might possibly insist on making a defense.
+
+John Hardshaw served out his term at San Quentin, and when discharged
+was met at the prison gates by his wife, who had returned from "the
+States" to receive him. It is thought they went straight to Europe;
+anyhow, a general power-of-attorney to a lawyer still living among us--
+from whom I have many of the facts of this simple history--was executed
+in Paris. This lawyer in a short time sold everything that Hardshaw
+owned in California, and for years nothing was heard of the unfortunate
+couple; though many to whose ears had come vague and inaccurate
+intimations of their strange story, and who had known them, recalled
+their personality with tenderness and their misfortunes with compassion.
+
+Some years later they returned, both broken in fortune and spirits and
+he in health. The purpose of their return I have not been able to
+ascertain. For some time they lived, under the name of Johnson, in a
+respectable enough quarter south of Market Street, pretty well put, and
+were never seen away from the vicinity of their dwelling. They must have
+had a little money left, for it is not known that the man had any
+occupation, the state of his health probably not permitting. The woman's
+devotion to her invalid husband was matter of remark among their
+neighbors; she seemed never absent from his side and always supporting
+and cheering him. They would sit for hours on one of the benches in a
+little public park, she reading to him, his hand in hers, her light
+touch occasionally visiting his pale brow, her still beautiful eyes
+frequently lifted from the book to look into his as she made some
+comment on the text, or closed the volume to beguile his mood with talk
+of--what? Nobody ever overheard a conversation between these two. The
+reader who has had the patience to follow their history to this point
+may possibly find a pleasure in conjecture: there was probably something
+to be avoided. The bearing of the man was one of profound dejection;
+indeed, the unsympathetic youth of the neighborhood, with that keen
+sense for visible characteristics which ever distinguishes the young
+male of our species, sometimes mentioned him among themselves by the
+name of Spoony Glum.
+
+It occurred one day that John Hardshaw was possessed by the spirit of
+unrest. God knows what led him whither he went, but he crossed Market
+Street and held his way northward over the hills, and downward into the
+region known as North Beach. Turning aimlessly to the left he followed
+his toes along an unfamiliar street until he was opposite what for that
+period was a rather grand dwelling, and for this is a rather shabby
+factory. Casting his eyes casually upward he saw at an open window what
+it had been better that he had not seen--the face and figure of Elvira
+Barwell. Their eyes met. With a sharp exclamation, like the cry of a
+startled bird, the lady sprang to her feet and thrust her body half out
+of the window, clutching the casing on each side. Arrested by the cry,
+the people in the street below looked up. Hardshaw stood motionless,
+speechless, his eyes two flames. "Take care!" shouted some one in the
+crowd, as the woman strained further and further forward, defying the
+silent, implacable law of gravitation, as once she had defied that other
+law which God thundered from Sinai. The suddenness of her movements had
+tumbled a torrent of dark hair down her shoulders, and now it was blown
+about her cheeks, almost concealing her face. A moment so, and then--! A
+fearful cry rang through the street, as, losing her balance, she pitched
+headlong from the window, a confused and whirling mass of skirts, limbs,
+hair, and white face, and struck the pavement with a horrible sound and
+a force of impact that was felt a hundred feet away. For a moment all
+eyes refused their office and turned from the sickening spectacle on the
+sidewalk. Drawn again to that horror, they saw it strangely augmented. A
+man, hatless, seated flat upon the paving stones, held the broken,
+bleeding body against his breast, kissing the mangled cheeks and
+streaming mouth through tangles of wet hair, his own features
+indistinguishably crimson with the blood that half-strangled him and ran
+in rills from his soaken beard.
+
+The reporter's task is nearly finished. The Barwells had that very
+morning returned from a two years' absence in Peru. A week later the
+widower, now doubly desolate, since there could be no missing the
+significance of Hardshaw's horrible demonstration, had sailed for I know
+not what distant port; he has never come back to stay. Hardshaw--as
+Johnson no longer--passed a year in the Stockton asylum for the insane,
+where also, through the influence of pitying friends, his wife was
+admitted to care for him. When he was discharged, not cured but
+harmless, they returned to the city; it would seem ever to have had some
+dreadful fascination for them. For a time they lived near the Mission
+Dolores, in poverty only less abject than that which is their present
+lot; but it was too far away from the objective point of the man's daily
+pilgrimage. They could not afford car fare. So that poor devil of an
+angel from Heaven--wife to this convict and lunatic--obtained, at a fair
+enough rental, the blank-faced shanty on the lower terrace of Goat Hill.
+Thence to the structure that was a dwelling and is a factory the
+distance is not so great; it is, in fact, an agreeable walk, judging
+from the man's eager and cheerful look as he takes it. The return
+journey appears to be a trifle wearisome.
+
+
+
+
+AN ADVENTURE AT BROWNVILLE[1]
+
+[1] This story was written in collaboration with Miss Ina Lillian
+Peterson, to whom is rightly due the credit for whatever merit it may
+have.
+
+I taught a little country school near Brownville, which, as every one
+knows who has had the good luck to live there, is the capital of a
+considerable expanse of the finest scenery in California. The town is
+somewhat frequented in summer by a class of persons whom it is the habit
+of the local journal to call "pleasure seekers," but who by a juster
+classification would be known as "the sick and those in adversity."
+Brownville itself might rightly enough be described, indeed, as a summer
+place of last resort. It is fairly well endowed with boarding-houses, at
+the least pernicious of which I performed twice a day (lunching at the
+schoolhouse) the humble rite of cementing the alliance between soul and
+body. From this "hostelry" (as the local journal preferred to call it
+when it did not call it a "caravanserai") to the schoolhouse the
+distance by the wagon road was about a mile and a half; but there was a
+trail, very little used, which led over an intervening range of low,
+heavily wooded hills, considerably shortening the distance. By this
+trail I was returning one evening later than usual. It was the last day
+of the term and I had been detained at the schoolhouse until almost
+dark, preparing an account of my stewardship for the trustees--two of
+whom, I proudly reflected, would be able to read it, and the third (an
+instance of the dominion of mind over matter) would be overruled in his
+customary antagonism to the schoolmaster of his own creation.
+
+I had gone not more than a quarter of the way when, finding an interest
+in the antics of a family of lizards which dwelt thereabout and seemed
+full of reptilian joy for their immunity from the ills incident to life
+at the Brownville House, I sat upon a fallen tree to observe them. As I
+leaned wearily against a branch of the gnarled old trunk the twilight
+deepened in the somber woods and the faint new moon began casting
+visible shadows and gilding the leaves of the trees with a tender but
+ghostly light.
+
+I heard the sound of voices--a woman's, angry, impetuous, rising against
+deep masculine tones, rich and musical. I strained my eyes, peering
+through the dusky shadows of the wood, hoping to get a view of the
+intruders on my solitude, but could see no one. For some yards in each
+direction I had an uninterrupted view of the trail, and knowing of no
+other within a half mile thought the persons heard must be approaching
+from the wood at one side. There was no sound but that of the voices,
+which were now so distinct that I could catch the words. That of the man
+gave me an impression of anger, abundantly confirmed by the matter
+spoken.
+
+"I will have no threats; you are powerless, as you very well know. Let
+things remain as they are or, by God! you shall both suffer for it."
+
+"What do you mean?"--this was the voice of the woman, a cultivated
+voice, the voice of a lady. "You would not--murder us."
+
+There was no reply, at least none that was audible to me. During the
+silence I peered into the wood in hope to get a glimpse of the speakers,
+for I felt sure that this was an affair of gravity in which ordinary
+scruples ought not to count. It seemed to me that the woman was in
+peril; at any rate the man had not disavowed a willingness to murder.
+When a man is enacting the role of potential assassin he has not the
+right to choose his audience.
+
+After some little time I saw them, indistinct in the moonlight among the
+trees. The man, tall and slender, seemed clothed in black; the woman
+wore, as nearly as I could make out, a gown of gray stuff. Evidently
+they were still unaware of my presence in the shadow, though for some
+reason when they renewed their conversation they spoke in lower tones
+and I could no longer understand. As I looked the woman seemed to sink
+to the ground and raise her hands in supplication, as is frequently done
+on the stage and never, so far as I knew, anywhere else, and I am now
+not altogether sure that it was done in this instance. The man fixed his
+eyes upon her; they seemed to glitter bleakly in the moonlight with an
+expression that made me apprehensive that he would turn them upon me. I
+do not know by what impulse I was moved, but I sprang to my feet out of
+the shadow. At that instant the figures vanished. I peered in vain
+through the spaces among the trees and clumps of undergrowth. The night
+wind rustled the leaves; the lizards had retired early, reptiles of
+exemplary habits. The little moon was already slipping behind a black
+hill in the west.
+
+I went home, somewhat disturbed in mind, half doubting that I had heard
+or seen any living thing excepting the lizards. It all seemed a trifle
+odd and uncanny. It was as if among the several phenomena, objective and
+subjective, that made the sum total of the incident there had been an
+uncertain element which had diffused its dubious character over all--had
+leavened the whole mass with unreality. I did not like it.
+
+At the breakfast table the next morning there was a new face; opposite
+me sat a young woman at whom I merely glanced as I took my seat. In
+speaking to the high and mighty female personage who condescended to
+seem to wait upon us, this girl soon invited my attention by the sound
+of her voice, which was like, yet not altogether like, the one still
+murmuring in my memory of the previous evening's adventure. A moment
+later another girl, a few years older, entered the room and sat at the
+left of the other, speaking to her a gentle "good morning." By _her_
+voice I was startled: it was without doubt the one of which the first
+girl's had reminded me. Here was the lady of the sylvan incident sitting
+bodily before me, "in her habit as she lived."
+
+Evidently enough the two were sisters.
+
+With a nebulous kind of apprehension that I might be recognized as the
+mute inglorious hero of an adventure which had in my consciousness and
+conscience something of the character of eavesdropping, I allowed myself
+only a hasty cup of the lukewarm coffee thoughtfully provided by the
+prescient waitress for the emergency, and left the table. As I passed
+out of the house into the grounds I heard a rich, strong male voice
+singing an aria from "Rigoletto." I am bound to say that it was
+exquisitely sung, too, but there was something in the performance that
+displeased me, I could say neither what nor why, and I walked rapidly
+away.
+
+Returning later in the day I saw the elder of the two young women
+standing on the porch and near her a tall man in black clothing--the man
+whom I had expected to see. All day the desire to know something of
+these persons had been uppermost in my mind and I now resolved to learn
+what I could of them in any way that was neither dishonorable nor low.
+
+The man was talking easily and affably to his companion, but at the
+sound of my footsteps on the gravel walk he ceased, and turning about
+looked me full in the face. He was apparently of middle age, dark and
+uncommonly handsome. His attire was faultless, his bearing easy and
+graceful, the look which he turned upon me open, free, and devoid of any
+suggestion of rudeness. Nevertheless it affected me with a distinct
+emotion which on subsequent analysis in memory appeared to be compounded
+of hatred and dread--I am unwilling to call it fear. A second later the
+man and woman had disappeared. They seemed to have a trick of
+disappearing. On entering the house, however, I saw them through the
+open doorway of the parlor as I passed; they had merely stepped through
+a window which opened down to the floor.
+
+Cautiously "approached" on the subject of her new guests my landlady
+proved not ungracious. Restated with, I hope, some small reverence for
+English grammar the facts were these: the two girls were Pauline and Eva
+Maynard of San Francisco; the elder was Pauline. The man was Richard
+Benning, their guardian, who had been the most intimate friend of their
+father, now deceased. Mr. Benning had brought them to Brownville in the
+hope that the mountain climate might benefit Eva, who was thought to be
+in danger of consumption.
+
+Upon these short and simple annals the landlady wrought an embroidery of
+eulogium which abundantly attested her faith in Mr. Benning's will and
+ability to pay for the best that her house afforded. That he had a good
+heart was evident to her from his devotion to his two beautiful wards
+and his really touching solicitude for their comfort. The evidence
+impressed me as insufficient and I silently found the Scotch verdict,
+"Not proven."
+
+Certainly Mr. Benning was most attentive to his wards. In my strolls
+about the country I frequently encountered them--sometimes in company
+with other guests of the hotel--exploring the gulches, fishing, rifle
+shooting, and otherwise wiling away the monotony of country life; and
+although I watched them as closely as good manners would permit I saw
+nothing that would in any way explain the strange words that I had
+overheard in the wood. I had grown tolerably well acquainted with the
+young ladies and could exchange looks and even greetings with their
+guardian without actual repugnance.
+
+A month went by and I had almost ceased to interest myself in their
+affairs when one night our entire little community was thrown into
+excitement by an event which vividly recalled my experience in the
+forest.
+
+This was the death of the elder girl, Pauline.
+
+The sisters had occupied the same bedroom on the third floor of the
+house. Waking in the gray of the morning Eva had found Pauline dead
+beside her. Later, when the poor girl was weeping beside the body amid a
+throng of sympathetic if not very considerate persons, Mr. Benning
+entered the room and appeared to be about to take her hand. She drew
+away from the side of the dead and moved slowly toward the door.
+
+"It is you," she said--"you who have done this. You--you--you!"
+
+"She is raving," he said in a low voice. He followed her, step by step,
+as she retreated, his eyes fixed upon hers with a steady gaze in which
+there was nothing of tenderness nor of compassion. She stopped; the hand
+that she had raised in accusation fell to her side, her dilated eyes
+contracted visibly, the lids slowly dropped over them, veiling their
+strange wild beauty, and she stood motionless and almost as white as the
+dead girl lying near. The man took her hand and put his arm gently about
+her shoulders, as if to support her. Suddenly she burst into a passion
+of tears and clung to him as a child to its mother. He smiled with a
+smile that affected me most disagreeably--perhaps any kind of smile
+would have done so--and led her silently out of the room.
+
+There was an inquest--and the customary verdict: the deceased, it
+appeared, came to her death through "heart disease." It was before the
+invention of heart _failure_, though the heart of poor Pauline had
+indubitably failed. The body was embalmed and taken to San Francisco by
+some one summoned thence for the purpose, neither Eva nor Benning
+accompanying it. Some of the hotel gossips ventured to think that very
+strange, and a few hardy spirits went so far as to think it very strange
+indeed; but the good landlady generously threw herself into the breach,
+saying it was owing to the precarious nature of the girl's health. It is
+not of record that either of the two persons most affected and
+apparently least concerned made any explanation.
+
+One evening about a week after the death I went out upon the veranda of
+the hotel to get a book that I had left there. Under some vines shutting
+out the moonlight from a part of the space I saw Richard Benning, for
+whose apparition I was prepared by having previously heard the low,
+sweet voice of Eva Maynard, whom also I now discerned, standing before
+him with one hand raised to his shoulder and her eyes, as nearly as I
+could judge, gazing upward into his. He held her disengaged hand and his
+head was bent with a singular dignity and grace. Their attitude was that
+of lovers, and as I stood in deep shadow to observe I felt even guiltier
+than on that memorable night in the wood. I was about to retire, when
+the girl spoke, and the contrast between her words and her attitude was
+so surprising that I remained, because I had merely forgotten to go
+away.
+
+"You will take my life," she said, "as you did Pauline's. I know your
+intention as well as I know your power, and I ask nothing, only that you
+finish your work without needless delay and let me be at peace."
+
+He made no reply--merely let go the hand that he was holding, removed
+the other from his shoulder, and turning away descended the steps
+leading to the garden and disappeared in the shrubbery. But a moment
+later I heard, seemingly from a great distance, his fine clear voice in
+a barbaric chant, which as I listened brought before some inner
+spiritual sense a consciousness of some far, strange land peopled with
+beings having forbidden powers. The song held me in a kind of spell, but
+when it had died away I recovered and instantly perceived what I thought
+an opportunity. I walked out of my shadow to where the girl stood. She
+turned and stared at me with something of the look, it seemed to me, of
+a hunted hare. Possibly my intrusion had frightened her.
+
+"Miss Maynard," I said, "I beg you to tell me who that man is and the
+nature of his power over you. Perhaps this is rude in me, but it is not
+a matter for idle civilities. When a woman is in danger any man has a
+right to act."
+
+She listened without visible emotion--almost I thought without interest,
+and when I had finished she closed her big blue eyes as if unspeakably
+weary.
+
+"You can do nothing," she said.
+
+I took hold of her arm, gently shaking her as one shakes a person
+falling into a dangerous sleep.
+
+"You must rouse yourself," I said; "something must be done and you must
+give me leave to act. You have said that that man killed your sister,
+and I believe it--that he will kill you, and I believe that."
+
+She merely raised her eyes to mine.
+
+"Will you not tell me all?" I added.
+
+"There is nothing to be done, I tell you--nothing. And if I could do
+anything I would not. It does not matter in the least. We shall be here
+only two days more; we go away then, oh, so far! If you have observed
+anything, I beg you to be silent."
+
+"But this is madness, girl." I was trying by rough speech to break the
+deadly repose of her manner. "You have accused him of murder. Unless you
+explain these things to me I shall lay the matter before the
+authorities."
+
+This roused her, but in a way that I did not like. She lifted her head
+proudly and said: "Do not meddle, sir, in what does not concern you.
+This is my affair, Mr. Moran, not yours."
+
+"It concerns every person in the country--in the world," I answered,
+with equal coldness. "If you had no love for your sister I, at least, am
+concerned for you."
+
+"Listen," she interrupted, leaning toward me. "I loved her, yes, God
+knows! But more than that--beyond all, beyond expression, I love _him_.
+You have overheard a secret, but you shall not make use of it to harm
+him. I shall deny all. Your word against mine--it will be that. Do you
+think your 'authorities' will believe you?"
+
+She was now smiling like an angel and, God help me! I was heels over
+head in love with her! Did she, by some of the many methods of
+divination known to her sex, read my feelings? Her whole manner had
+altered.
+
+"Come," she said, almost coaxingly, "promise that you will not be
+impolite again." She took my arm in the most friendly way. "Come, I will
+walk with you. He will not know--he will remain away all night."
+
+Up and down the veranda we paced in the moonlight, she seemingly
+forgetting her recent bereavement, cooing and murmuring girl-wise of
+every kind of nothing in all Brownville; I silent, consciously awkward
+and with something of the feeling of being concerned in an intrigue. It
+was a revelation--this most charming and apparently blameless creature
+coolly and confessedly deceiving the man for whom a moment before she
+had acknowledged and shown the supreme love which finds even death an
+acceptable endearment.
+
+"Truly," I thought in my inexperience, "here is something new under the
+moon."
+
+And the moon must have smiled.
+
+Before we parted I had exacted a promise that she would walk with me the
+next afternoon--before going away forever--to the Old Mill, one of
+Brownville's revered antiquities, erected in 1860.
+
+"If he is not about," she added gravely, as I let go the hand she had
+given me at parting, and of which, may the good saints forgive me, I
+strove vainly to repossess myself when she had said it--so charming, as
+the wise Frenchman has pointed out, do we find woman's infidelity when
+we are its objects, not its victims. In apportioning his benefactions
+that night the Angel of Sleep overlooked me.
+
+The Brownville House dined early, and after dinner the next day Miss
+Maynard, who had not been at table, came to me on the veranda, attired
+in the demurest of walking costumes, saying not a word. "He" was
+evidently "not about." We went slowly up the road that led to the Old
+Mill. She was apparently not strong and at times took my arm,
+relinquishing it and taking it again rather capriciously, I thought. Her
+mood, or rather her succession of moods, was as mutable as skylight in a
+rippling sea. She jested as if she had never heard of such a thing as
+death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly afterward
+would sing a few bars of some grave melody with such tenderness of
+expression that I had to turn away my eyes lest she should see the
+evidence of her success in art, if art it was, not artlessness, as then
+I was compelled to think it. And she said the oddest things in the most
+unconventional way, skirting sometimes unfathomable abysms of thought,
+where I had hardly the courage to set foot. In short, she was
+fascinating in a thousand and fifty different ways, and at every step I
+executed a new and profounder emotional folly, a hardier spiritual
+indiscretion, incurring fresh liability to arrest by the constabulary of
+conscience for infractions of my own peace.
+
+Arriving at the mill, she made no pretense of stopping, but turned into
+a trail leading through a field of stubble toward a creek. Crossing by a
+rustic bridge we continued on the trail, which now led uphill to one of
+the most picturesque spots in the country. The Eagle's Nest, it was
+called--the summit of a cliff that rose sheer into the air to a height
+of hundreds of feet above the forest at its base. From this elevated
+point we had a noble view of another valley and of the opposite hills
+flushed with the last rays of the setting sun.
+
+As we watched the light escaping to higher and higher planes from the
+encroaching flood of shadow filling the valley we heard footsteps, and
+in another moment were joined by Richard Benning.
+
+"I saw you from the road," he said carelessly; "so I came up."
+
+Being a fool, I neglected to take him by the throat and pitch him into
+the treetops below, but muttered some polite lie instead. On the girl
+the effect of his coming was immediate and unmistakable. Her face was
+suffused with the glory of love's transfiguration: the red light of the
+sunset had not been more obvious in her eyes than was now the lovelight
+that replaced it.
+
+"I am so glad you came!" she said, giving him both her hands; and, God
+help me! it was manifestly true.
+
+Seating himself upon the ground he began a lively dissertation upon the
+wild flowers of the region, a number of which he had with him. In the
+middle of a facetious sentence he suddenly ceased speaking and fixed his
+eyes upon Eva, who leaned against the stump of a tree, absently plaiting
+grasses. She lifted her eyes in a startled way to his, as if she had
+_felt_ his look. She then rose, cast away her grasses, and moved slowly
+away from him. He also rose, continuing to look at her. He had still in
+his hand the bunch of flowers. The girl turned, as if to speak, but said
+nothing. I recall clearly now something of which I was but
+half-conscious then--the dreadful contrast between the smile upon her
+lips and the terrified expression in her eyes as she met his steady and
+imperative gaze. I know nothing of how it happened, nor how it was that
+I did not sooner understand; I only know that with the smile of an angel
+upon her lips and that look of terror in her beautiful eyes Eva Maynard
+sprang from the cliff and shot crashing into the tops of the pines
+below!
+
+How and how long afterward I reached the place I cannot say, but Richard
+Benning was already there, kneeling beside the dreadful thing that had
+been a woman.
+
+"She is dead--quite dead," he said coldly. "I will go to town for
+assistance. Please do me the favor to remain."
+
+He rose to his feet and moved away, but in a moment had stopped and
+turned about.
+
+"You have doubtless observed, my friend," he said, "that this was
+entirely her own act. I did not rise in time to prevent it, and you, not
+knowing her mental condition--you could not, of course, have suspected."
+
+His manner maddened me.
+
+"You are as much her assassin," I said, "as if your damnable hands had
+cut her throat." He shrugged his shoulders without reply and, turning,
+walked away. A moment later I heard, through the deepening shadows of
+the wood into which he had disappeared, a rich, strong, baritone voice
+singing "_La donna e mobile_," from "Rigoletto."
+
+
+
+
+THE FAMOUS GILSON BEQUEST
+
+It was rough on Gilson. Such was the terse, cold, but not altogether
+unsympathetic judgment of the better public opinion at Mammon Hill--the
+dictum of respectability. The verdict of the opposite, or rather the
+opposing, element--the element that lurked red-eyed and restless about
+Moll Gurney's "deadfall," while respectability took it with sugar at Mr.
+Jo. Bentley's gorgeous "saloon"--was to pretty much the same general
+effect, though somewhat more ornately expressed by the use of
+picturesque expletives, which it is needless to quote. Virtually, Mammon
+Hill was a unit on the Gilson question. And it must be confessed that in
+a merely temporal sense all was not well with Mr. Gilson. He had that
+morning been led into town by Mr. Brentshaw and publicly charged with
+horse stealing; the sheriff meantime busying himself about The Tree with
+a new manila rope and Carpenter Pete being actively employed between
+drinks upon a pine box about the length and breadth of Mr. Gilson.
+Society having rendered its verdict, there remained between Gilson and
+eternity only the decent formality of a trial.
+
+These are the short and simple annals of the prisoner: He had recently
+been a resident of New Jerusalem, on the north fork of the Little Stony,
+but had come to the newly discovered placers of Mammon Hill immediately
+before the "rush" by which the former place was depopulated. The
+discovery of the new diggings had occurred opportunely for Mr. Gilson,
+for it had only just before been intimated to him by a New Jerusalem
+vigilance committee that it would better his prospects in, and for, life
+to go somewhere; and the list of places to which he could safely go did
+not include any of the older camps; so he naturally established himself
+at Mammon Hill. Being eventually followed thither by all his judges, he
+ordered his conduct with considerable circumspection, but as he had
+never been known to do an honest day's work at any industry sanctioned
+by the stern local code of morality except draw poker he was still an
+object of suspicion. Indeed, it was conjectured that he was the author
+of the many daring depredations that had recently been committed with
+pan and brush on the sluice boxes.
+
+Prominent among those in whom this suspicion had ripened into a
+steadfast conviction was Mr. Brentshaw. At all seasonable and
+unseasonable times Mr. Brentshaw avowed his belief in Mr. Gilson's
+connection with these unholy midnight enterprises, and his own
+willingness to prepare a way for the solar beams through the body of any
+one who might think it expedient to utter a different opinion--which, in
+his presence, no one was more careful not to do than the peace-loving
+person most concerned. Whatever may have been the truth of the matter,
+it is certain that Gilson frequently lost more "clean dust" at Jo.
+Bentley's faro table than it was recorded in local history that he had
+ever honestly earned at draw poker in all the days of the camp's
+existence. But at last Mr. Bentley--fearing, it may be, to lose the more
+profitable patronage of Mr. Brentshaw--peremptorily refused to let
+Gilson copper the queen, intimating at the same time, in his frank,
+forthright way, that the privilege of losing money at "this bank" was a
+blessing appertaining to, proceeding logically from, and coterminous
+with, a condition of notorious commercial righteousness and social good
+repute.
+
+The Hill thought it high time to look after a person whom its most
+honored citizen had felt it his duty to rebuke at a considerable
+personal sacrifice. The New Jerusalem contingent, particularly, began to
+abate something of the toleration begotten of amusement at their own
+blunder in exiling an objectionable neighbor from the place which they
+had left to the place whither they had come. Mammon Hill was at last of
+one mind. Not much was said, but that Gilson must hang was "in the air."
+But at this critical juncture in his affairs he showed signs of an
+altered life if not a changed heart. Perhaps it was only that "the bank"
+being closed against him he had no further use for gold dust. Anyhow the
+sluice boxes were molested no more forever. But it was impossible to
+repress the abounding energies of such a nature as his, and he
+continued, possibly from habit, the tortuous courses which he had
+pursued for profit of Mr. Bentley. After a few tentative and resultless
+undertakings in the way of highway robbery--if one may venture to
+designate road-agency by so harsh a name--he made one or two modest
+essays in horse-herding, and it was in the midst of a promising
+enterprise of this character, and just as he had taken the tide in his
+affairs at its flood, that he made shipwreck. For on a misty, moonlight
+night Mr. Brentshaw rode up alongside a person who was evidently leaving
+that part of the country, laid a hand upon the halter connecting Mr.
+Gilson's wrist with Mr. Harper's bay mare, tapped him familiarly on the
+cheek with the barrel of a navy revolver and requested the pleasure of
+his company in a direction opposite to that in which he was traveling.
+
+It was indeed rough on Gilson.
+
+On the morning after his arrest he was tried, convicted, and sentenced.
+It only remains, so far as concerns his earthly career, to hang him,
+reserving for more particular mention his last will and testament,
+which, with great labor, he contrived in prison, and in which, probably
+from some confused and imperfect notion of the rights of captors, he
+bequeathed everything he owned to his "lawfle execketer," Mr. Brentshaw.
+The bequest, however, was made conditional on the legatee taking the
+testator's body from The Tree and "planting it white."
+
+So Mr. Gilson was--I was about to say "swung off," but I fear there has
+been already something too much of slang in this straightforward
+statement of facts; besides, the manner in which the law took its course
+is more accurately described in the terms employed by the judge in
+passing sentence: Mr. Gilson was "strung up."
+
+In due season Mr. Brentshaw, somewhat touched, it may well be, by the
+empty compliment of the bequest, repaired to The Tree to pluck the fruit
+thereof. When taken down the body was found to have in its waistcoat
+pocket a duly attested codicil to the will already noted. The nature of
+its provisions accounted for the manner in which it had been withheld,
+for had Mr. Brentshaw previously been made aware of the conditions under
+which he was to succeed to the Gilson estate he would indubitably have
+declined the responsibility. Briefly stated, the purport of the codicil
+was as follows:
+
+Whereas, at divers times and in sundry places, certain persons had
+asserted that during his life the testator had robbed their sluice
+boxes; therefore, if during the five years next succeeding the date of
+this instrument any one should make proof of such assertion before a
+court of law, such person was to receive as reparation the entire
+personal and real estate of which the testator died seized and
+possessed, minus the expenses of court and a stated compensation to the
+executor, Henry Clay Brentshaw; provided, that if more than one person
+made such proof the estate was to be equally divided between or among
+them. But in case none should succeed in so establishing the testator's
+guilt, then the whole property, minus court expenses, as aforesaid,
+should go to the said Henry Clay Brentshaw for his own use, as stated in
+the will.
+
+The syntax of this remarkable document was perhaps open to critical
+objection, but that was clearly enough the meaning of it. The
+orthography conformed to no recognized system, but being mainly phonetic
+it was not ambiguous. As the probate judge remarked, it would take five
+aces to beat it. Mr. Brentshaw smiled good-humoredly, and after
+performing the last sad rites with amusing ostentation, had himself duly
+sworn as executor and conditional legatee under the provisions of a law
+hastily passed (at the instance of the member from the Mammon Hill
+district) by a facetious legislature; which law was afterward discovered
+to have created also three or four lucrative offices and authorized the
+expenditure of a considerable sum of public money for the construction
+of a certain railway bridge that with greater advantage might perhaps
+have been erected on the line of some actual railway.
+
+Of course Mr. Brentshaw expected neither profit from the will nor
+litigation in consequence of its unusual provisions; Gilson, although
+frequently "flush," had been a man whom assessors and tax collectors
+were well satisfied to lose no money by. But a careless and merely
+formal search among his papers revealed title deeds to valuable estates
+in the East and certificates of deposit for incredible sums in banks
+less severely scrupulous than that of Mr. Jo. Bentley.
+
+The astounding news got abroad directly, throwing the Hill into a fever
+of excitement. The Mammon Hill _Patriot_, whose editor had been a
+leading spirit in the proceedings that resulted in Gilson's departure
+from New Jerusalem, published a most complimentary obituary notice of
+the deceased, and was good enough to call attention to the fact that his
+degraded contemporary, the Squaw Gulch _Clarion_, was bringing virtue
+into contempt by beslavering with flattery the memory of one who in life
+had spurned the vile sheet as a nuisance from his door. Undeterred by
+the press, however, claimants under the will were not slow in presenting
+themselves with their evidence; and great as was the Gilson estate it
+appeared conspicuously paltry considering the vast number of sluice
+boxes from which it was averred to have been obtained. The country rose
+as one man!
+
+Mr. Brentshaw was equal to the emergency. With a shrewd application of
+humble auxiliary devices, he at once erected above the bones of his
+benefactor a costly monument, overtopping every rough headboard in the
+cemetery, and on this he judiciously caused to be inscribed an epitaph
+of his own composing, eulogizing the honesty, public spirit and cognate
+virtues of him who slept beneath, "a victim to the unjust aspersions of
+Slander's viper brood."
+
+Moreover, he employed the best legal talent in the Territory to defend
+the memory of his departed friend, and for five long years the
+Territorial courts were occupied with litigation growing out of the
+Gilson bequest. To fine forensic abilities Mr. Brentshaw opposed
+abilities more finely forensic; in bidding for purchasable favors he
+offered prices which utterly deranged the market; the judges found at
+his hospitable board entertainment for man and beast, the like of which
+had never been spread in the Territory; with mendacious witnesses he
+confronted witnesses of superior mendacity.
+
+Nor was the battle confined to the temple of the blind goddess--it
+invaded the press, the pulpit, the drawing-room. It raged in the mart,
+the exchange, the school; in the gulches, and on the street corners. And
+upon the last day of the memorable period to which legal action under
+the Gilson will was limited, the sun went down upon a region in which
+the moral sense was dead, the social conscience callous, the
+intellectual capacity dwarfed, enfeebled, and confused! But Mr.
+Brentshaw was victorious all along the line.
+
+On that night it so happened that the cemetery in one corner of which
+lay the now honored ashes of the late Milton Gilson, Esq., was partly
+under water. Swollen by incessant rains, Cat Creek had spilled over its
+banks an angry flood which, after scooping out unsightly hollows
+wherever the soil had been disturbed, had partly subsided, as if ashamed
+of the sacrilege, leaving exposed much that had been piously concealed.
+Even the famous Gilson monument, the pride and glory of Mammon Hill, was
+no longer a standing rebuke to the "viper brood"; succumbing to the
+sapping current it had toppled prone to earth. The ghoulish flood had
+exhumed the poor, decayed pine coffin, which now lay half-exposed, in
+pitiful contrast to the pompous monolith which, like a giant note of
+admiration, emphasized the disclosure.
+
+To this depressing spot, drawn by some subtle influence he had sought
+neither to resist nor analyze, came Mr. Brentshaw. An altered man was
+Mr. Brentshaw. Five years of toil, anxiety, and wakefulness had dashed
+his black locks with streaks and patches of gray, bowed his fine figure,
+drawn sharp and angular his face, and debased his walk to a doddering
+shuffle. Nor had this lustrum of fierce contention wrought less upon his
+heart and intellect. The careless good humor that had prompted him to
+accept the trust of the dead man had given place to a fixed habit of
+melancholy. The firm, vigorous intellect had overripened into the mental
+mellowness of second childhood. His broad understanding had narrowed to
+the accommodation of a single idea; and in place of the quiet, cynical
+incredulity of former days, there was in him a haunting faith in the
+supernatural, that flitted and fluttered about his soul, shadowy,
+batlike, ominous of insanity. Unsettled in all else, his understanding
+clung to one conviction with the tenacity of a wrecked intellect. That
+was an unshaken belief in the entire blamelessness of the dead Gilson.
+He had so often sworn to this in court and asserted it in private
+conversation--had so frequently and so triumphantly established it by
+testimony that had come expensive to him (for that very day he had paid
+the last dollar of the Gilson estate to Mr. Jo. Bentley, the last
+witness to the Gilson good character)--that it had become to him a sort
+of religious faith. It seemed to him the one great central and basic
+truth of life--the sole serene verity in a world of lies.
+
+On that night, as he seated himself pensively upon the prostrate
+monument, trying by the uncertain moonlight to spell out the epitaph
+which five years before he had composed with a chuckle that memory had
+not recorded, tears of remorse came into his eyes as he remembered that
+he had been mainly instrumental in compassing by a false accusation this
+good man's death; for during some of the legal proceedings, Mr. Harper,
+for a consideration (forgotten) had come forward and sworn that in the
+little transaction with his bay mare the deceased had acted in strict
+accordance with the Harperian wishes, confidentially communicated to the
+deceased and by him faithfully concealed at the cost of his life. All
+that Mr. Brentshaw had since done for the dead man's memory seemed
+pitifully inadequate--most mean, paltry, and debased with selfishness!
+
+As he sat there, torturing himself with futile regrets, a faint shadow
+fell across his eyes. Looking toward the moon, hanging low in the west,
+he saw what seemed a vague, watery cloud obscuring her; but as it moved
+so that her beams lit up one side of it he perceived the clear, sharp
+outline of a human figure. The apparition became momentarily more
+distinct, and grew, visibly; it was drawing near. Dazed as were his
+senses, half locked up with terror and confounded with dreadful
+imaginings, Mr. Brentshaw yet could but perceive, or think he perceived,
+in this unearthly shape a strange similitude to the mortal part of the
+late Milton Gilson, as that person had looked when taken from The Tree
+five years before. The likeness was indeed complete, even to the full,
+stony eyes, and a certain shadowy circle about the neck. It was without
+coat or hat, precisely as Gilson had been when laid in his poor, cheap
+casket by the not ungentle hands of Carpenter Pete--for whom some one
+had long since performed the same neighborly office. The spectre, if
+such it was, seemed to bear something in its hands which Mr. Brentshaw
+could not clearly make out. It drew nearer, and paused at last beside
+the coffin containing the ashes of the late Mr. Gilson, the lid of which
+was awry, half disclosing the uncertain interior. Bending over this, the
+phantom seemed to shake into it from a basin some dark substance of
+dubious consistency, then glided stealthily back to the lowest part of
+the cemetery. Here the retiring flood had stranded a number of open
+coffins, about and among which it gurgled with low sobbings and stilly
+whispers. Stooping over one of these, the apparition carefully brushed
+its contents into the basin, then returning to its own casket, emptied
+the vessel into that, as before. This mysterious operation was repeated
+at every exposed coffin, the ghost sometimes dipping its laden basin
+into the running water, and gently agitating it to free it of the baser
+clay, always hoarding the residuum in its own private box. In short, the
+immortal part of the late Milton Gilson was cleaning up the dust of its
+neighbors and providently adding the same to its own.
+
+Perhaps it was a phantasm of a disordered mind in a fevered body.
+Perhaps it was a solemn farce enacted by pranking existences that throng
+the shadows lying along the border of another world. God knows; to us is
+permitted only the knowledge that when the sun of another day touched
+with a grace of gold the ruined cemetery of Mammon Hill his kindliest
+beam fell upon the white, still face of Henry Brentshaw, dead among the
+dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE APPLICANT
+
+Pushing his adventurous shins through the deep snow that had fallen
+overnight, and encouraged by the glee of his little sister, following in
+the open way that he made, a sturdy small boy, the son of Grayville's
+most distinguished citizen, struck his foot against something of which
+there was no visible sign on the surface of the snow. It is the purpose
+of this narrative to explain how it came to be there.
+
+No one who has had the advantage of passing through Grayville by day can
+have failed to observe the large stone building crowning the low hill to
+the north of the railway station--that is to say, to the right in going
+toward Great Mowbray. It is a somewhat dull-looking edifice, of the
+Early Comatose order, and appears to have been designed by an architect
+who shrank from publicity, and although unable to conceal his work--even
+compelled, in this instance, to set it on an eminence in the sight of
+men--did what he honestly could to insure it against a second look. So
+far as concerns its outer and visible aspect, the Abersush Home for Old
+Men is unquestionably inhospitable to human attention. But it is a
+building of great magnitude, and cost its benevolent founder the profit
+of many a cargo of the teas and silks and spices that his ships brought
+up from the under-world when he was in trade in Boston; though the main
+expense was its endowment. Altogether, this reckless person had robbed
+his heirs-at-law of no less a sum than half a million dollars and flung
+it away in riotous giving. Possibly it was with a view to get out of
+sight of the silent big witness to his extravagance that he shortly
+afterward disposed of all his Grayville property that remained to him,
+turned his back upon the scene of his prodigality and went off across
+the sea in one of his own ships. But the gossips who got their
+inspiration most directly from Heaven declared that he went in search of
+a wife--a theory not easily reconciled with that of the village
+humorist, who solemnly averred that the bachelor philanthropist had
+departed this life (left Grayville, to wit) because the marriageable
+maidens had made it too hot to hold him. However this may have been, he
+had not returned, and although at long intervals there had come to
+Grayville, in a desultory way, vague rumors of his wanderings in strange
+lands, no one seemed certainly to know about him, and to the new
+generation he was no more than a name. But from above the portal of the
+Home for Old Men the name shouted in stone.
+
+Despite its unpromising exterior, the Home is a fairly commodious place
+of retreat from the ills that its inmates have incurred by being poor
+and old and men. At the time embraced in this brief chronicle they were
+in number about a score, but in acerbity, querulousness, and general
+ingratitude they could hardly be reckoned at fewer than a hundred; at
+least that was the estimate of the superintendent, Mr. Silas Tilbody. It
+was Mr. Tilbody's steadfast conviction that always, in admitting new old
+men to replace those who had gone to another and a better Home, the
+trustees had distinctly in will the infraction of his peace, and the
+trial of his patience. In truth, the longer the institution was
+connected with him, the stronger was his feeling that the founder's
+scheme of benevolence was sadly impaired by providing any inmates at
+all. He had not much imagination, but with what he had he was addicted
+to the reconstruction of the Home for Old Men into a kind of "castle in
+Spain," with himself as castellan, hospitably entertaining about a score
+of sleek and prosperous middle-aged gentlemen, consummately good-humored
+and civilly willing to pay for their board and lodging. In this revised
+project of philanthropy the trustees, to whom he was indebted for his
+office and responsible for his conduct, had not the happiness to appear.
+As to them, it was held by the village humorist aforementioned that in
+their management of the great charity Providence had thoughtfully
+supplied an incentive to thrift. With the inference which he expected to
+be drawn from that view we have nothing to do; it had neither support
+nor denial from the inmates, who certainly were most concerned. They
+lived out their little remnant of life, crept into graves neatly
+numbered, and were succeeded by other old men as like them as could be
+desired by the Adversary of Peace. If the Home was a place of punishment
+for the sin of unthrift the veteran offenders sought justice with a
+persistence that attested the sincerity of their penitence. It is to one
+of these that the reader's attention is now invited.
+
+In the matter of attire this person was not altogether engaging. But for
+this season, which was midwinter, a careless observer might have looked
+upon him as a clever device of the husbandman indisposed to share the
+fruits of his toil with the crows that toil not, neither spin--an error
+that might not have been dispelled without longer and closer observation
+than he seemed to court; for his progress up Abersush Street, toward the
+Home in the gloom of the winter evening, was not visibly faster than
+what might have been expected of a scarecrow blessed with youth, health,
+and discontent. The man was indisputably ill-clad, yet not without a
+certain fitness and good taste, withal; for he was obviously an
+applicant for admittance to the Home, where poverty was a qualification.
+In the army of indigence the uniform is rags; they serve to distinguish
+the rank and file from the recruiting officers.
+
+As the old man, entering the gate of the grounds, shuffled up the broad
+walk, already white with the fast-falling snow, which from time to time
+he feebly shook from its various coigns of vantage on his person, he
+came under inspection of the large globe lamp that burned always by
+night over the great door of the building. As if unwilling to incur its
+revealing beams, he turned to the left and, passing a considerable
+distance along the face of the building, rang at a smaller door emitting
+a dimmer ray that came from within, through the fanlight, and expended
+itself incuriously overhead. The door was opened by no less a personage
+than the great Mr. Tilbody himself. Observing his visitor, who at once
+uncovered, and somewhat shortened the radius of the permanent curvature
+of his back, the great man gave visible token of neither surprise nor
+displeasure. Mr. Tilbody was, indeed, in an uncommonly good humor, a
+phenomenon ascribable doubtless to the cheerful influence of the season;
+for this was Christmas Eve, and the morrow would be that blessed 365th
+part of the year that all Christian souls set apart for mighty feats of
+goodness and joy. Mr. Tilbody was so full of the spirit of the season
+that his fat face and pale blue eyes, whose ineffectual fire served to
+distinguish it from an untimely summer squash, effused so genial a glow
+that it seemed a pity that he could not have lain down in it, basking in
+the consciousness of his own identity. He was hatted, booted,
+overcoated, and umbrellaed, as became a person who was about to expose
+himself to the night and the storm on an errand of charity; for Mr.
+Tilbody had just parted from his wife and children to go "down town" and
+purchase the wherewithal to confirm the annual falsehood about the
+hunch-bellied saint who frequents the chimneys to reward little boys and
+girls who are good, and especially truthful. So he did not invite the
+old man in, but saluted him cheerily:
+
+"Hello! just in time; a moment later and you would have missed me. Come,
+I have no time to waste; we'll walk a little way together."
+
+"Thank you," said the old man, upon whose thin and white but not ignoble
+face the light from the open door showed an expression that was perhaps
+disappointment; "but if the trustees--if my application--"
+
+"The trustees," Mr. Tilbody said, closing more doors than one, and
+cutting off two kinds of light, "have agreed that your application
+disagrees with them."
+
+Certain sentiments are inappropriate to Christmastide, but Humor, like
+Death, has all seasons for his own.
+
+"Oh, my God!" cried the old man, in so thin and husky a tone that the
+invocation was anything but impressive, and to at least one of his two
+auditors sounded, indeed, somewhat ludicrous. To the Other--but that is
+a matter which laymen are devoid of the light to expound.
+
+"Yes," continued Mr. Tilbody, accommodating his gait to that of his
+companion, who was mechanically, and not very successfully, retracing
+the track that he had made through the snow; "they have decided that,
+under the circumstances--under the very peculiar circumstances, you
+understand--it would be inexpedient to admit you. As superintendent and
+_ex officio_ secretary of the honorable board"--as Mr. Tilbody "read his
+title clear" the magnitude of the big building, seen through its veil of
+falling snow, appeared to suffer somewhat in comparison--"it is my duty
+to inform you that, in the words of Deacon Byram, the chairman, your
+presence in the Home would--under the circumstances--be peculiarly
+embarrassing. I felt it my duty to submit to the honorable board the
+statement that you made to me yesterday of your needs, your physical
+condition, and the trials which it has pleased Providence to send upon
+you in your very proper effort to present your claims in person; but,
+after careful, and I may say prayerful, consideration of your case--with
+something too, I trust, of the large charitableness appropriate to the
+season--it was decided that we would not be justified in doing anything
+likely to impair the usefulness of the institution intrusted (under
+Providence) to our care."
+
+They had now passed out of the grounds; the street lamp opposite the
+gate was dimly visible through the snow. Already the old man's former
+track was obliterated, and he seemed uncertain as to which way he should
+go. Mr. Tilbody had drawn a little away from him, but paused and turned
+half toward him, apparently reluctant to forego the continuing
+opportunity.
+
+"Under the circumstances," he resumed, "the decision--"
+
+But the old man was inaccessible to the suasion of his verbosity; he had
+crossed the street into a vacant lot and was going forward, rather
+deviously toward nowhere in particular--which, he having nowhere in
+particular to go to, was not so reasonless a proceeding as it looked.
+
+And that is how it happened that the next morning, when the church bells
+of all Grayville were ringing with an added unction appropriate to the
+day, the sturdy little son of Deacon Byram, breaking a way through the
+snow to the place of worship, struck his foot against the body of Amasa
+Abersush, philanthropist.
+
+
+
+
+A WATCHER BY THE DEAD
+
+I
+
+In an upper room of an unoccupied dwelling in the part of San Francisco
+known as North Beach lay the body of a man, under a sheet. The hour was
+near nine in the evening; the room was dimly lighted by a single candle.
+Although the weather was warm, the two windows, contrary to the custom
+which gives the dead plenty of air, were closed and the blinds drawn
+down. The furniture of the room consisted of but three pieces--an
+arm-chair, a small reading-stand supporting the candle, and a long
+kitchen table, supporting the body of the man. All these, as also the
+corpse, seemed to have been recently brought in, for an observer, had
+there been one, would have seen that all were free from dust, whereas
+everything else in the room was pretty thickly coated with it, and there
+were cobwebs in the angles of the walls.
+
+Under the sheet the outlines of the body could be traced, even the
+features, these having that unnaturally sharp definition which seems to
+belong to faces of the dead, but is really characteristic of those only
+that have been wasted by disease. From the silence of the room one would
+rightly have inferred that it was not in the front of the house, facing
+a street. It really faced nothing but a high breast of rock, the rear of
+the building being set into a hill.
+
+As a neighboring church clock was striking nine with an indolence which
+seemed to imply such an indifference to the flight of time that one
+could hardly help wondering why it took the trouble to strike at all,
+the single door of the room was opened and a man entered, advancing
+toward the body. As he did so the door closed, apparently of its own
+volition; there was a grating, as of a key turned with difficulty, and
+the snap of the lock bolt as it shot into its socket. A sound of
+retiring footsteps in the passage outside ensued, and the man was to all
+appearance a prisoner. Advancing to the table, he stood a moment looking
+down at the body; then with a slight shrug of the shoulders walked over
+to one of the windows and hoisted the blind. The darkness outside was
+absolute, the panes were covered with dust, but by wiping this away he
+could see that the window was fortified with strong iron bars crossing
+it within a few inches of the glass and imbedded in the masonry on each
+side. He examined the other window. It was the same. He manifested no
+great curiosity in the matter, did not even so much as raise the sash.
+If he was a prisoner he was apparently a tractable one. Having completed
+his examination of the room, he seated himself in the arm-chair, took a
+book from his pocket, drew the stand with its candle alongside and began
+to read.
+
+The man was young--not more than thirty--dark in complexion,
+smooth-shaven, with brown hair. His face was thin and high-nosed, with a
+broad forehead and a "firmness" of the chin and jaw which is said by
+those having it to denote resolution. The eyes were gray and steadfast,
+not moving except with definitive purpose. They were now for the greater
+part of the time fixed upon his book, but he occasionally withdrew them
+and turned them to the body on the table, not, apparently, from any
+dismal fascination which under such circumstances it might be supposed
+to exercise upon even a courageous person, nor with a conscious
+rebellion against the contrary influence which might dominate a timid
+one. He looked at it as if in his reading he had come upon something
+recalling him to a sense of his surroundings. Clearly this watcher by
+the dead was discharging his trust with intelligence and composure, as
+became him.
+
+After reading for perhaps a half-hour he seemed to come to the end of a
+chapter and quietly laid away the book. He then rose and taking the
+reading-stand from the floor carried it into a corner of the room near
+one of the windows, lifted the candle from it and returned to the empty
+fireplace before which he had been sitting.
+
+A moment later he walked over to the body on the table, lifted the sheet
+and turned it back from the head, exposing a mass of dark hair and a
+thin face-cloth, beneath which the features showed with even sharper
+definition than before. Shading his eyes by interposing his free hand
+between them and the candle, he stood looking at his motionless
+companion with a serious and tranquil regard. Satisfied with his
+inspection, he pulled the sheet over the face again and returning to the
+chair, took some matches off the candlestick, put them in the side
+pocket of his sack-coat and sat down. He then lifted the candle from its
+socket and looked at it critically, as if calculating how long it would
+last. It was barely two inches long; in another hour he would be in
+darkness. He replaced it in the candlestick and blew it out.
+
+II
+
+In a physician's office in Kearny Street three men sat about a table,
+drinking punch and smoking. It was late in the evening, almost midnight,
+indeed, and there had been no lack of punch. The gravest of the three,
+Dr. Helberson, was the host--it was in his rooms they sat. He was about
+thirty years of age; the others were even younger; all were physicians.
+
+"The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead," said Dr.
+Helberson, "is hereditary and incurable. One needs no more be ashamed of
+it than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity for
+mathematics, or a tendency to lie."
+
+The others laughed. "Oughtn't a man to be ashamed to lie?" asked the
+youngest of the three, who was in fact a medical student not yet
+graduated.
+
+"My dear Harper, I said nothing about that. The tendency to lie is one
+thing; lying is another."
+
+"But do you think," said the third man, "that this superstitious
+feeling, this fear of the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, is
+universal? I am myself not conscious of it."
+
+"Oh, but it is 'in your system' for all that," replied Helberson; "it
+needs only the right conditions--what Shakespeare calls the 'confederate
+season'--to manifest itself in some very disagreeable way that will open
+your eyes. Physicians and soldiers are of course more nearly free from
+it than others."
+
+"Physicians and soldiers!--why don't you add hangmen and headsmen? Let
+us have in all the assassin classes."
+
+"No, my dear Mancher; the juries will not let the public executioners
+acquire sufficient familiarity with death to be altogether unmoved by
+it."
+
+Young Harper, who had been helping himself to a fresh cigar at the
+sideboard, resumed his seat. "What would you consider conditions under
+which any man of woman born would become insupportably conscious of his
+share of our common weakness in this regard?" he asked, rather
+verbosely.
+
+"Well, I should say that if a man were locked up all night with a
+corpse--alone--in a dark room--of a vacant house--with no bed covers to
+pull over his head--and lived through it without going altogether mad,
+he might justly boast himself not of woman born, nor yet, like Macduff,
+a product of Caesarean section."
+
+"I thought you never would finish piling up conditions," said Harper,
+"but I know a man who is neither a physician nor a soldier who will
+accept them all, for any stake you like to name."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"His name is Jarette--a stranger here; comes from my town in New York. I
+have no money to back him, but he will back himself with loads of it."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"He would rather bet than eat. As for fear--I dare say he thinks it some
+cutaneous disorder, or possibly a particular kind of religious heresy."
+
+"What does he look like?" Helberson was evidently becoming interested.
+
+"Like Mancher, here--might be his twin brother."
+
+"I accept the challenge," said Helberson, promptly.
+
+"Awfully obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure," drawled Mancher,
+who was growing sleepy. "Can't I get into this?"
+
+"Not against me," Helberson said. "I don't want _your_ money."
+
+"All right," said Mancher; "I'll be the corpse."
+
+The others laughed.
+
+The outcome of this crazy conversation we have seen.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+In extinguishing his meagre allowance of candle Mr. Jarette's object was
+to preserve it against some unforeseen need. He may have thought, too,
+or half thought, that the darkness would be no worse at one time than
+another, and if the situation became insupportable it would be better to
+have a means of relief, or even release. At any rate it was wise to have
+a little reserve of light, even if only to enable him to look at his
+watch.
+
+No sooner had he blown out the candle and set it on the floor at his
+side than he settled himself comfortably in the arm-chair, leaned back
+and closed his eyes, hoping and expecting to sleep. In this he was
+disappointed; he had never in his life felt less sleepy, and in a few
+minutes he gave up the attempt. But what could he do? He could not go
+groping about in absolute darkness at the risk of bruising himself--at
+the risk, too, of blundering against the table and rudely disturbing the
+dead. We all recognize their right to lie at rest, with immunity from
+all that is harsh and violent. Jarette almost succeeded in making
+himself believe that considerations of this kind restrained him from
+risking the collision and fixed him to the chair.
+
+While thinking of this matter he fancied that he heard a faint sound in
+the direction of the table--what kind of sound he could hardly have
+explained. He did not turn his head. Why should he--in the darkness? But
+he listened--why should he not? And listening he grew giddy and grasped
+the arms of the chair for support. There was a strange ringing in his
+ears; his head seemed bursting; his chest was oppressed by the
+constriction of his clothing. He wondered why it was so, and whether
+these were symptoms of fear. Then, with a long and strong expiration,
+his chest appeared to collapse, and with the great gasp with which he
+refilled his exhausted lungs the vertigo left him and he knew that so
+intently had he listened that he had held his breath almost to
+suffocation. The revelation was vexatious; he arose, pushed away the
+chair with his foot and strode to the centre of the room. But one does
+not stride far in darkness; he began to grope, and finding the wall
+followed it to an angle, turned, followed it past the two windows and
+there in another corner came into violent contact with the
+reading-stand, overturning it. It made a clatter that startled him. He
+was annoyed. "How the devil could I have forgotten where it was?" he
+muttered, and groped his way along the third wall to the fireplace. "I
+must put things to rights," said he, feeling the floor for the candle.
+
+Having recovered that, he lighted it and instantly turned his eyes to
+the table, where, naturally, nothing had undergone any change. The
+reading-stand lay unobserved upon the floor: he had forgotten to "put it
+to rights." He looked all about the room, dispersing the deeper shadows
+by movements of the candle in his hand, and crossing over to the door
+tested it by turning and pulling the knob with all his strength. It did
+not yield and this seemed to afford him a certain satisfaction; indeed,
+he secured it more firmly by a bolt which he had not before observed.
+Returning to his chair, he looked at his watch; it was half-past nine.
+With a start of surprise he held the watch at his ear. It had not
+stopped. The candle was now visibly shorter. He again extinguished it,
+placing it on the floor at his side as before.
+
+Mr. Jarette was not at his ease; he was distinctly dissatisfied with his
+surroundings, and with himself for being so. "What have I to fear?" he
+thought. "This is ridiculous and disgraceful; I will not be so great a
+fool." But courage does not come of saying, "I will be courageous," nor
+of recognizing its appropriateness to the occasion. The more Jarette
+condemned himself, the more reason he gave himself for condemnation; the
+greater the number of variations which he played upon the simple theme
+of the harmlessness of the dead, the more insupportable grew the discord
+of his emotions. "What!" he cried aloud in the anguish of his spirit,
+"what! shall I, who have not a shade of superstition in my nature--I,
+who have no belief in immortality--I, who know (and never more clearly
+than now) that the after-life is the dream of a desire--shall I lose at
+once my bet, my honor and my self-respect, perhaps my reason, because
+certain savage ancestors dwelling in caves and burrows conceived the
+monstrous notion that the dead walk by night?--that--" Distinctly,
+unmistakably, Mr. Jarette heard behind him a light, soft sound of
+footfalls, deliberate, regular, successively nearer!
+
+IV
+
+Just before daybreak the next morning Dr. Helberson and his young
+friend Harper were driving slowly through the streets of North Beach in
+the doctor's coupe.
+
+"Have you still the confidence of youth in the courage or stolidity of
+your friend?" said the elder man. "Do you believe that I have lost this
+wager?"
+
+"I _know_ you have," replied the other, with enfeebling emphasis.
+
+"Well, upon my soul, I hope so."
+
+It was spoken earnestly, almost solemnly. There was a silence for a few
+moments.
+
+"Harper," the doctor resumed, looking very serious in the shifting
+half-lights that entered the carriage as they passed the street lamps,
+"I don't feel altogether comfortable about this business. If your friend
+had not irritated me by the contemptuous manner in which he treated my
+doubt of his endurance--a purely physical quality--and by the cool
+incivility of his suggestion that the corpse be that of a physician, I
+should not have gone on with it. If anything should happen we are
+ruined, as I fear we deserve to be."
+
+"What can happen? Even if the matter should be taking a serious turn, of
+which I am not at all afraid, Mancher has only to 'resurrect' himself
+and explain matters. With a genuine 'subject' from the dissecting-room,
+or one of your late patients, it might be different."
+
+Dr. Mancher, then, had been as good as his promise; he was the "corpse."
+
+Dr. Helberson was silent for a long time, as the carriage, at a snail's
+pace, crept along the same street it had traveled two or three times
+already. Presently he spoke: "Well, let us hope that Mancher, if he has
+had to rise from the dead, has been discreet about it. A mistake in that
+might make matters worse instead of better."
+
+"Yes," said Harper, "Jarette would kill him. But, Doctor"--looking at
+his watch as the carriage passed a gas lamp--"it is nearly four o'clock
+at last."
+
+A moment later the two had quitted the vehicle and were walking briskly
+toward the long-unoccupied house belonging to the doctor in which they
+had immured Mr. Jarette in accordance with the terms of the mad wager.
+As they neared it they met a man running. "Can you tell me," he cried,
+suddenly checking his speed, "where I can find a doctor?"
+
+"What's the matter?" Helberson asked, non-committal.
+
+"Go and see for yourself," said the man, resuming his running.
+
+They hastened on. Arrived at the house, they saw several persons
+entering in haste and excitement. In some of the dwellings near by and
+across the way the chamber windows were thrown up, showing a protrusion
+of heads. All heads were asking questions, none heeding the questions of
+the others. A few of the windows with closed blinds were illuminated;
+the inmates of those rooms were dressing to come down. Exactly opposite
+the door of the house that they sought a street lamp threw a yellow,
+insufficient light upon the scene, seeming to say that it could disclose
+a good deal more if it wished. Harper paused at the door and laid a hand
+upon his companion's arm. "It is all up with us, Doctor," he said in
+extreme agitation, which contrasted strangely with his free-and-easy
+words; "the game has gone against us all. Let's not go in there; I'm for
+lying low."
+
+"I'm a physician," said Dr. Helberson, calmly; "there may be need of
+one."
+
+They mounted the doorsteps and were about to enter. The door was open;
+the street lamp opposite lighted the passage into which it opened. It
+was full of men. Some had ascended the stairs at the farther end, and,
+denied admittance above, waited for better fortune. All were talking,
+none listening. Suddenly, on the upper landing there was a great
+commotion; a man had sprung out of a door and was breaking away from
+those endeavoring to detain him. Down through the mass of affrighted
+idlers he came, pushing them aside, flattening them against the wall on
+one side, or compelling them to cling to the rail on the other,
+clutching them by the throat, striking them savagely, thrusting them
+back down the stairs and walking over the fallen. His clothing was in
+disorder, he was without a hat. His eyes, wild and restless, had in them
+something more terrifying than his apparently superhuman strength. His
+face, smooth-shaven, was bloodless, his hair frost-white.
+
+As the crowd at the foot of the stairs, having more freedom, fell away
+to let him pass Harper sprang forward. "Jarette! Jarette!" he cried.
+
+Dr. Helberson seized Harper by the collar and dragged him back. The man
+looked into their faces without seeming to see them and sprang through
+the door, down the steps, into the street, and away. A stout policeman,
+who had had inferior success in conquering his way down the stairway,
+followed a moment later and started in pursuit, all the heads in the
+windows--those of women and children now--screaming in guidance.
+
+The stairway being now partly cleared, most of the crowd having rushed
+down to the street to observe the flight and pursuit, Dr. Helberson
+mounted to the landing, followed by Harper. At a door in the upper
+passage an officer denied them admittance. "We are physicians," said the
+doctor, and they passed in. The room was full of men, dimly seen,
+crowded about a table. The newcomers edged their way forward and looked
+over the shoulders of those in the front rank. Upon the table, the lower
+limbs covered with a sheet, lay the body of a man, brilliantly
+illuminated by the beam of a bull's-eye lantern held by a policeman
+standing at the feet. The others, excepting those near the head--the
+officer himself--all were in darkness. The face of the body showed
+yellow, repulsive, horrible! The eyes were partly open and upturned and
+the jaw fallen; traces of froth defiled the lips, the chin, the cheeks.
+A tall man, evidently a doctor, bent over the body with his hand thrust
+under the shirt front. He withdrew it and placed two fingers in the open
+mouth. "This man has been about six hours dead," said he. "It is a case
+for the coroner."
+
+He drew a card from his pocket, handed it to the officer and made his
+way toward the door.
+
+"Clear the room--out, all!" said the officer, sharply, and the body
+disappeared as if it had been snatched away, as shifting the lantern he
+flashed its beam of light here and there against the faces of the crowd.
+The effect was amazing! The men, blinded, confused, almost terrified,
+made a tumultuous rush for the door, pushing, crowding, and tumbling
+over one another as they fled, like the hosts of Night before the shafts
+of Apollo. Upon the struggling, trampling mass the officer poured his
+light without pity and without cessation. Caught in the current,
+Helberson and Harper were swept out of the room and cascaded down the
+stairs into the street.
+
+"Good God, Doctor! did I not tell you that Jarette would kill him?" said
+Harper, as soon as they were clear of the crowd.
+
+"I believe you did," replied the other, without apparent emotion.
+
+They walked on in silence, block after block. Against the graying east
+the dwellings of the hill tribes showed in silhouette. The familiar milk
+wagon was already astir in the streets; the baker's man would soon come
+upon the scene; the newspaper carrier was abroad in the land.
+
+"It strikes me, youngster," said Helberson, "that you and I have been
+having too much of the morning air lately. It is unwholesome; we need a
+change. What do you say to a tour in Europe?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"I'm not particular. I should suppose that four o'clock this afternoon
+would be early enough."
+
+"I'll meet you at the boat," said Harper.
+
+Seven years afterward these two men sat upon a bench in Madison Square,
+New York, in familiar conversation. Another man, who had been observing
+them for some time, himself unobserved, approached and, courteously
+lifting his hat from locks as white as frost, said: "I beg your pardon,
+gentlemen, but when you have killed a man by coming to life, it is best
+to change clothes with him, and at the first opportunity make a break
+for liberty."
+
+Helberson and Harper exchanged significant glances. They were obviously
+amused. The former then looked the stranger kindly in the eye and
+replied:
+
+"That has always been my plan. I entirely agree with you as to its
+advant--"
+
+He stopped suddenly, rose and went white. He stared at the man,
+open-mouthed; he trembled visibly.
+
+"Ah!" said the stranger, "I see that you are indisposed, Doctor. If you
+cannot treat yourself Dr. Harper can do something for you, I am sure."
+
+"Who the devil are you?" said Harper, bluntly.
+
+The stranger came nearer and, bending toward them, said in a whisper: "I
+call myself Jarette sometimes, but I don't mind telling you, for old
+friendship, that I am Dr. William Mancher."
+
+The revelation brought Harper to his feet. "Mancher!" he cried; and
+Helberson added: "It is true, by God!"
+
+"Yes," said the stranger, smiling vaguely, "it is true enough, no
+doubt."
+
+He hesitated and seemed to be trying to recall something, then began
+humming a popular air. He had apparently forgotten their presence.
+
+"Look here, Mancher," said the elder of the two, "tell us just what
+occurred that night--to Jarette, you know."
+
+"Oh, yes, about Jarette," said the other. "It's odd I should have
+neglected to tell you--I tell it so often. You see I knew, by
+over-hearing him talking to himself, that he was pretty badly
+frightened. So I couldn't resist the temptation to come to life and have
+a bit of fun out of him--I couldn't really. That was all right, though
+certainly I did not think he would take it so seriously; I did not,
+truly. And afterward--well, it was a tough job changing places with him,
+and then--damn you! you didn't let me out!"
+
+Nothing could exceed the ferocity with which these last words were
+delivered. Both men stepped back in alarm.
+
+"We?--why--why," Helberson stammered, losing his self-possession
+utterly, "we had nothing to do with it."
+
+"Didn't I say you were Drs. Hell-born and Sharper?" inquired the man,
+laughing.
+
+"My name is Helberson, yes; and this gentleman is Mr. Harper," replied
+the former, reassured by the laugh. "But we are not physicians now; we
+are--well, hang it, old man, we are gamblers."
+
+And that was the truth.
+
+"A very good profession--very good, indeed; and, by the way, I hope
+Sharper here paid over Jarette's money like an honest stakeholder. A
+very good and honorable profession," he repeated, thoughtfully, moving
+carelessly away; "but I stick to the old one. I am High Supreme Medical
+Officer of the Bloomingdale Asylum; it is my duty to cure the
+superintendent."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN AND THE SNAKE
+
+  It is of veritabyll report, and attested of so many that there be nowe
+  of wyse and learned none to gaynsaye it, that y'e serpente hys eye
+  hath a magnetick propertie that whosoe falleth into its svasion is
+  drawn forwards in despyte of his wille, and perisheth miserabyll by
+  y'e creature hys byte.
+
+Stretched at ease upon a sofa, in gown and slippers, Harker Brayton
+smiled as he read the foregoing sentence in old Morryster's _Marvells of
+Science._ "The only marvel in the matter," he said to himself, "is that
+the wise and learned in Morryster's day should have believed such
+nonsense as is rejected by most of even the ignorant in ours." A train
+of reflection followed--for Brayton was a man of thought--and he
+unconsciously lowered his book without altering the direction of his
+eyes. As soon as the volume had gone below the line of sight, something
+in an obscure corner of the room recalled his attention to his
+surroundings. What he saw, in the shadow under his bed, was two small
+points of light, apparently about an inch apart. They might have been
+reflections of the gas jet above him, in metal nail heads; he gave them
+but little thought and resumed his reading. A moment later something--
+some impulse which it did not occur to him to analyze--impelled him to
+lower the book again and seek for what he saw before. The points of
+light were still there. They seemed to have become brighter than before,
+shining with a greenish lustre that he had not at first observed. He
+thought, too, that they might have moved a trifle--were somewhat nearer.
+They were still too much in shadow, however, to reveal their nature and
+origin to an indolent attention, and again he resumed his reading.
+Suddenly something in the text suggested a thought that made him start
+and drop the book for the third time to the side of the sofa, whence,
+escaping from his hand, it fell sprawling to the floor, back upward.
+Brayton, half-risen, was staring intently into the obscurity beneath the
+bed, where the points of light shone with, it seemed to him, an added
+fire. His attention was now fully aroused, his gaze eager and
+imperative. It disclosed, almost directly under the foot-rail of the
+bed, the coils of a large serpent--the points of light were its eyes!
+Its horrible head, thrust flatly forth from the innermost coil and
+resting upon the outermost, was directed straight toward him, the
+definition of the wide, brutal jaw and the idiot-like forehead serving
+to show the direction of its malevolent gaze. The eyes were no longer
+merely luminous points; they looked into his own with a meaning, a
+malign significance.
+
+II
+
+A snake in a bedroom of a modern city dwelling of the better sort is,
+happily, not so common a phenomenon as to make explanation altogether
+needless. Harker Brayton, a bachelor of thirty-five, a scholar, idler
+and something of an athlete, rich, popular and of sound health, had
+returned to San Francisco from all manner of remote and unfamiliar
+countries. His tastes, always a trifle luxurious, had taken on an added
+exuberance from long privation; and the resources of even the Castle
+Hotel being inadequate to their perfect gratification, he had gladly
+accepted the hospitality of his friend, Dr. Druring, the distinguished
+scientist. Dr. Druring's house, a large, old-fashioned one in what is
+now an obscure quarter of the city, had an outer and visible aspect of
+proud reserve. It plainly would not associate with the contiguous
+elements of its altered environment, and appeared to have developed some
+of the eccentricities which come of isolation. One of these was a
+"wing," conspicuously irrelevant in point of architecture, and no less
+rebellious in matter of purpose; for it was a combination of laboratory,
+menagerie and museum. It was here that the doctor indulged the
+scientific side of his nature in the study of such forms of animal life
+as engaged his interest and comforted his taste--which, it must be
+confessed, ran rather to the lower types. For one of the higher nimbly
+and sweetly to recommend itself unto his gentle senses it had at least
+to retain certain rudimentary characteristics allying it to such
+"dragons of the prime" as toads and snakes. His scientific sympathies
+were distinctly reptilian; he loved nature's vulgarians and described
+himself as the Zola of zooelogy. His wife and daughters not having the
+advantage to share his enlightened curiosity regarding the works and
+ways of our ill-starred fellow-creatures, were with needless austerity
+excluded from what he called the Snakery and doomed to companionship
+with their own kind, though to soften the rigors of their lot he had
+permitted them out of his great wealth to outdo the reptiles in the
+gorgeousness of their surroundings and to shine with a superior
+splendor.
+
+Architecturally and in point of "furnishing" the Snakery had a severe
+simplicity befitting the humble circumstances of its occupants, many of
+whom, indeed, could not safely have been intrusted with the liberty that
+is necessary to the full enjoyment of luxury, for they had the
+troublesome peculiarity of being alive. In their own apartments,
+however, they were under as little personal restraint as was compatible
+with their protection from the baneful habit of swallowing one another;
+and, as Brayton had thoughtfully been apprised, it was more than a
+tradition that some of them had at divers times been found in parts of
+the premises where it would have embarrassed them to explain their
+presence. Despite the Snakery and its uncanny associations--to which,
+indeed, he gave little attention--Brayton found life at the Druring
+mansion very much to his mind.
+
+III
+
+Beyond a smart shock of surprise and a shudder of mere loathing Mr.
+Brayton was not greatly affected. His first thought was to ring the call
+bell and bring a servant; but although the bell cord dangled within easy
+reach he made no movement toward it; it had occurred to his mind that
+the act might subject him to the suspicion of fear, which he certainly
+did not feel. He was more keenly conscious of the incongruous nature of
+the situation than affected by its perils; it was revolting, but absurd.
+
+The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar. Its
+length he could only conjecture; the body at the largest visible part
+seemed about as thick as his forearm. In what way was it dangerous, if
+in any way? Was it venomous? Was it a constrictor? His knowledge of
+nature's danger signals did not enable him to say; he had never
+deciphered the code.
+
+If not dangerous the creature was at least offensive. It was _de trop_--
+"matter out of place"--an impertinence. The gem was unworthy of the
+setting. Even the barbarous taste of our time and country, which had
+loaded the walls of the room with pictures, the floor with furniture and
+the furniture with bric-a-brac, had not quite fitted the place for this
+bit of the savage life of the jungle. Besides--insupportable thought!--
+the exhalations of its breath mingled with the atmosphere which he
+himself was breathing.
+
+These thoughts shaped themselves with greater or less definition in
+Brayton's mind and begot action. The process is what we call
+consideration and decision. It is thus that we are wise and unwise. It
+is thus that the withered leaf in an autumn breeze shows greater or less
+intelligence than its fellows, falling upon the land or upon the lake.
+The secret of human action is an open one: something contracts our
+muscles. Does it matter if we give to the preparatory molecular changes
+the name of will?
+
+Brayton rose to his feet and prepared to back softly away from the
+snake, without disturbing it if possible, and through the door. Men
+retire so from the presence of the great, for greatness is power and
+power is a menace. He knew that he could walk backward without error.
+Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with
+paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons
+from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion. In the mean time
+the snake's eyes burned with a more pitiless malevolence than before.
+
+Brayton lifted his right foot free of the floor to step backward. That
+moment he felt a strong aversion to doing so.
+
+"I am accounted brave," he thought; "is bravery, then, no more than
+pride? Because there are none to witness the shame shall I retreat?"
+
+He was steadying himself with his right hand upon the back of a chair,
+his foot suspended.
+
+"Nonsense!" he said aloud; "I am not so great a coward as to fear to
+seem to myself afraid."
+
+He lifted the foot a little higher by slightly bending the knee and
+thrust it sharply to the floor--an inch in front of the other! He could
+not think how that occurred. A trial with the left foot had the same
+result; it was again in advance of the right. The hand upon the chair
+back was grasping it; the arm was straight, reaching somewhat backward.
+One might have said that he was reluctant to lose his hold. The snake's
+malignant head was still thrust forth from the inner coil as before, the
+neck level. It had not moved, but its eyes were now electric sparks,
+radiating an infinity of luminous needles.
+
+The man had an ashy pallor. Again he took a step forward, and another,
+partly dragging the chair, which when finally released fell upon the
+floor with a crash. The man groaned; the snake made neither sound nor
+motion, but its eyes were two dazzling suns. The reptile itself was
+wholly concealed by them. They gave off enlarging rings of rich and
+vivid colors, which at their greatest expansion successively vanished
+like soap-bubbles; they seemed to approach his very face, and anon were
+an immeasurable distance away. He heard, somewhere, the continuous
+throbbing of a great drum, with desultory bursts of far music,
+inconceivably sweet, like the tones of an aeolian harp. He knew it for
+the sunrise melody of Memnon's statue, and thought he stood in the
+Nileside reeds hearing with exalted sense that immortal anthem through
+the silence of the centuries.
+
+The music ceased; rather, it became by insensible degrees the distant
+roll of a retreating thunder-storm. A landscape, glittering with sun and
+rain, stretched before him, arched with a vivid rainbow framing in its
+giant curve a hundred visible cities. In the middle distance a vast
+serpent, wearing a crown, reared its head out of its voluminous
+convolutions and looked at him with his dead mother's eyes. Suddenly
+this enchanting landscape seemed to rise swiftly upward like the drop
+scene at a theatre, and vanished in a blank. Something struck him a hard
+blow upon the face and breast. He had fallen to the floor; the blood ran
+from his broken nose and his bruised lips. For a time he was dazed and
+stunned, and lay with closed eyes, his face against the floor. In a few
+moments he had recovered, and then knew that this fall, by withdrawing
+his eyes, had broken the spell that held him. He felt that now, by
+keeping his gaze averted, he would be able to retreat. But the thought
+of the serpent within a few feet of his head, yet unseen--perhaps in the
+very act of springing upon him and throwing its coils about his throat--
+was too horrible! He lifted his head, stared again into those baleful
+eyes and was again in bondage.
+
+The snake had not moved and appeared somewhat to have lost its power
+upon the imagination; the gorgeous illusions of a few moments before
+were not repeated. Beneath that flat and brainless brow its black, beady
+eyes simply glittered as at first with an expression unspeakably
+malignant. It was as if the creature, assured of its triumph, had
+determined to practise no more alluring wiles.
+
+Now ensued a fearful scene. The man, prone upon the floor, within a yard
+of his enemy, raised the upper part of his body upon his elbows, his
+head thrown back, his legs extended to their full length. His face was
+white between its stains of blood; his eyes were strained open to their
+uttermost expansion. There was froth upon his lips; it dropped off in
+flakes. Strong convulsions ran through his body, making almost
+serpentile undulations. He bent himself at the waist, shifting his legs
+from side to side. And every movement left him a little nearer to the
+snake. He thrust his hands forward to brace himself back, yet constantly
+advanced upon his elbows.
+
+IV
+
+Dr. Druring and his wife sat in the library. The scientist was in rare
+good humor.
+
+"I have just obtained by exchange with another collector," he said, "a
+splendid specimen of the _ophiophagus_."
+
+"And what may that be?" the lady inquired with a somewhat languid
+interest.
+
+"Why, bless my soul, what profound ignorance! My dear, a man who
+ascertains after marriage that his wife does not know Greek is entitled
+to a divorce. The _ophiophagus_ is a snake that eats other snakes."
+
+"I hope it will eat all yours," she said, absently shifting the lamp.
+"But how does it get the other snakes? By charming them, I suppose."
+
+"That is just like you, dear," said the doctor, with an affectation of
+petulance. "You know how irritating to me is any allusion to that vulgar
+superstition about a snake's power of fascination."
+
+The conversation was interrupted by a mighty cry, which rang through the
+silent house like the voice of a demon shouting in a tomb! Again and yet
+again it sounded, with terrible distinctness. They sprang to their feet,
+the man confused, the lady pale and speechless with fright. Almost
+before the echoes of the last cry had died away the doctor was out of
+the room, springing up the stairs two steps at a time. In the corridor
+in front of Brayton's chamber he met some servants who had come from the
+upper floor. Together they rushed at the door without knocking. It was
+unfastened and gave way. Brayton lay upon his stomach on the floor,
+dead. His head and arms were partly concealed under the foot rail of the
+bed. They pulled the body away, turning it upon the back. The face was
+daubed with blood and froth, the eyes were wide open, staring--a
+dreadful sight!
+
+"Died in a fit," said the scientist, bending his knee and placing his
+hand upon the heart. While in that position, he chanced to look under
+the bed. "Good God!" he added, "how did this thing get in here?"
+
+He reached under the bed, pulled out the snake and flung it, still
+coiled, to the center of the room, whence with a harsh, shuffling sound
+it slid across the polished floor till stopped by the wall, where it lay
+without motion. It was a stuffed snake; its eyes were two shoe buttons.
+
+
+
+
+A HOLY TERROR
+
+I
+
+There was an entire lack of interest in the latest arrival at
+Hurdy-Gurdy. He was not even christened with the picturesquely
+descriptive nick-name which is so frequently a mining camp's word of
+welcome to the newcomer. In almost any other camp thereabout this
+circumstance would of itself have secured him some such appellation as
+"The White-headed Conundrum," or "No Sarvey"--an expression naively
+supposed to suggest to quick intelligences the Spanish _quien sabe_. He
+came without provoking a ripple of concern upon the social surface of
+Hurdy-Gurdy--a place which to the general Californian contempt of men's
+personal history superadded a local indifference of its own. The time
+was long past when it was of any importance who came there, or if
+anybody came. No one was living at Hurdy-Gurdy.
+
+Two years before, the camp had boasted a stirring population of two or
+three thousand males and not fewer than a dozen females. A majority of
+the former had done a few weeks' earnest work in demonstrating, to the
+disgust of the latter, the singularly mendacious character of the person
+whose ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them thither--
+work, by the way, in which there was as little mental satisfaction as
+pecuniary profit; for a bullet from the pistol of a public-spirited
+citizen had put that imaginative gentleman beyond the reach of aspersion
+on the third day of the camp's existence. Still, his fiction had a
+certain foundation in fact, and many had lingered a considerable time in
+and about Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been long gone.
+
+But they had left ample evidence of their sojourn. From the point where
+Injun Creek falls into the Rio San Juan Smith, up along both banks of
+the former into the canon whence it emerges, extended a double row of
+forlorn shanties that seemed about to fall upon one another's neck to
+bewail their desolation; while about an equal number appeared to have
+straggled up the slope on either hand and perched themselves upon
+commanding eminences, whence they craned forward to get a good view of
+the affecting scene. Most of these habitations were emaciated as by
+famine to the condition of mere skeletons, about which clung unlovely
+tatters of what might have been skin, but was really canvas. The little
+valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and shovel, was unhandsome with
+long, bending lines of decaying flume resting here and there upon the
+summits of sharp ridges, and stilting awkwardly across the intervals
+upon unhewn poles. The whole place presented that raw and forbidding
+aspect of arrested development which is a new country's substitute for
+the solemn grace of ruin wrought by time. Wherever there remained a
+patch of the original soil a rank overgrowth of weeds and brambles had
+spread upon the scene, and from its dank, unwholesome shades the visitor
+curious in such matters might have obtained numberless souvenirs of the
+camp's former glory--fellowless boots mantled with green mould and
+plethoric of rotting leaves; an occasional old felt hat; desultory
+remnants of a flannel shirt; sardine boxes inhumanly mutilated and a
+surprising profusion of black bottles distributed with a truly catholic
+impartiality, everywhere.
+
+II
+
+The man who had now rediscovered Hurdy-Gurdy was evidently not curious
+as to its archaeology. Nor, as he looked about him upon the dismal
+evidences of wasted work and broken hopes, their dispiriting
+significance accentuated by the ironical pomp of a cheap gilding by the
+rising sun, did he supplement his sigh of weariness by one of
+sensibility. He simply removed from the back of his tired burro a
+miner's outfit a trifle larger than the animal itself, picketed that
+creature and selecting a hatchet from his kit moved off at once across
+the dry bed of Injun Creek to the top of a low, gravelly hill beyond.
+
+Stepping across a prostrate fence of brush and boards he picked up one
+of the latter, split it into five parts and sharpened them at one end.
+He then began a kind of search, occasionally stooping to examine
+something with close attention. At last his patient scrutiny appeared to
+be rewarded with success, for he suddenly erected his figure to its full
+height, made a gesture of satisfaction, pronounced the word "Scarry" and
+at once strode away with long, equal steps, which he counted. Then he
+stopped and drove one of his stakes into the earth. He then looked
+carefully about him, measured off a number of paces over a singularly
+uneven ground and hammered in another. Pacing off twice the distance at
+a right angle to his former course he drove down a third, and repeating
+the process sank home the fourth, and then a fifth. This he split at the
+top and in the cleft inserted an old letter envelope covered with an
+intricate system of pencil tracks. In short, he staked off a hill claim
+in strict accordance with the local mining laws of Hurdy-Gurdy and put
+up the customary notice.
+
+It is necessary to explain that one of the adjuncts to Hurdy-Gurdy--one
+to which that metropolis became afterward itself an adjunct--was a
+cemetery. In the first week of the camp's existence this had been
+thoughtfully laid out by a committee of citizens. The day after had been
+signalized by a debate between two members of the committee, with
+reference to a more eligible site, and on the third day the necropolis
+was inaugurated by a double funeral. As the camp had waned the cemetery
+had waxed; and long before the ultimate inhabitant, victorious alike
+over the insidious malaria and the forthright revolver, had turned the
+tail of his pack-ass upon Injun Creek the outlying settlement had become
+a populous if not popular suburb. And now, when the town was fallen into
+the sere and yellow leaf of an unlovely senility, the graveyard--though
+somewhat marred by time and circumstance, and not altogether exempt from
+innovations in grammar and experiments in orthography, to say nothing of
+the devastating coyote--answered the humble needs of its denizens with
+reasonable completeness. It comprised a generous two acres of ground,
+which with commendable thrift but needless care had been selected for
+its mineral unworth, contained two or three skeleton trees (one of which
+had a stout lateral branch from which a weather-wasted rope still
+significantly dangled), half a hundred gravelly mounds, a score of rude
+headboards displaying the literary peculiarities above mentioned and a
+struggling colony of prickly pears. Altogether, God's Location, as with
+characteristic reverence it had been called, could justly boast of an
+indubitably superior quality of desolation. It was in the most thickly
+settled part of this interesting demesne that Mr. Jefferson Doman staked
+off his claim. If in the prosecution of his design he should deem it
+expedient to remove any of the dead they would have the right to be
+suitably reinterred.
+
+III
+
+This Mr. Jefferson Doman was from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where six
+years before he had left his heart in the keeping of a golden-haired,
+demure-mannered young woman named Mary Matthews, as collateral security
+for his return to claim her hand.
+
+"I just _know_ you'll never get back alive--you never do succeed in
+anything," was the remark which illustrated Miss Matthews's notion of
+what constituted success and, inferentially, her view of the nature of
+encouragement. She added: "If you don't I'll go to California too. I can
+put the coins in little bags as you dig them out."
+
+This characteristically feminine theory of auriferous deposits did not
+commend itself to the masculine intelligence: it was Mr. Doman's belief
+that gold was found in a liquid state. He deprecated her intent with
+considerable enthusiasm, suppressed her sobs with a light hand upon her
+mouth, laughed in her eyes as he kissed away her tears, and with a
+cheerful "Ta-ta" went to California to labor for her through the long,
+loveless years, with a strong heart, an alert hope and a steadfast
+fidelity that never for a moment forgot what it was about. In the
+mean time, Miss Matthews had granted a monopoly of her humble talent for
+sacking up coins to Mr. Jo. Seeman, of New York, gambler, by whom it was
+better appreciated than her commanding genius for unsacking and
+bestowing them upon his local rivals. Of this latter aptitude, indeed,
+he manifested his disapproval by an act which secured him the position
+of clerk of the laundry in the State prison, and for her the _sobriquet_
+of "Split-faced Moll." At about this time she wrote to Mr. Doman a
+touching letter of renunciation, inclosing her photograph to prove that
+she had no longer had a right to indulge the dream of becoming Mrs.
+Doman, and recounting so graphically her fall from a horse that the
+staid "plug" upon which Mr. Doman had ridden into Red Dog to get the
+letter made vicarious atonement under the spur all the way back to camp.
+The letter failed in a signal way to accomplish its object; the fidelity
+which had before been to Mr. Doman a matter of love and duty was
+thenceforth a matter of honor also; and the photograph, showing the once
+pretty face sadly disfigured as by the slash of a knife, was duly
+instated in his affections and its more comely predecessor treated with
+contumelious neglect. On being informed of this, Miss Matthews, it is
+only fair to say, appeared less surprised than from the apparently low
+estimate of Mr. Doman's generosity which the tone of her former letter
+attested one would naturally have expected her to be. Soon after,
+however, her letters grew infrequent, and then ceased altogether.
+
+But Mr. Doman had another correspondent, Mr. Barney Bree, of
+Hurdy-Gurdy, formerly of Red Dog. This gentleman, although a notable
+figure among miners, was not a miner. His knowledge of mining consisted
+mainly in a marvelous command of its slang, to which he made copious
+contributions, enriching its vocabulary with a wealth of uncommon
+phrases more remarkable for their aptness than their refinement, and
+which impressed the unlearned "tenderfoot" with a lively sense of the
+profundity of their inventor's acquirements. When not entertaining a
+circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the East he could
+commonly be found pursuing the comparatively obscure industry of
+sweeping out the various dance houses and purifying the cuspidors.
+
+Barney had apparently but two passions in life--love of Jefferson Doman,
+who had once been of some service to him, and love of whisky, which
+certainly had not. He had been among the first in the rush to
+Hurdy-Gurdy, but had not prospered, and had sunk by degrees to the
+position of grave digger. This was not a vocation, but Barney in a
+desultory way turned his trembling hand to it whenever some local
+misunderstanding at the card table and his own partial recovery from a
+prolonged debauch occurred coincidently in point of time. One day Mr.
+Doman received, at Red Dog, a letter with the simple postmark, "Hurdy,
+Cal.," and being occupied with another matter, carelessly thrust it into
+a chink of his cabin for future perusal. Some two years later it was
+accidentally dislodged and he read it. It ran as follows:--
+
+  HURDY, June 6.
+
+  FRIEND JEFF: I've hit her hard in the boneyard. She's blind and lousy.
+  I'm on the divvy--that's me, and mum's my lay till you toot.
+  Yours, BARNEY.
+
+  P.S.--I've clayed her with Scarry.
+
+With some knowledge of the general mining camp _argot_ and of Mr. Bree's
+private system for the communication of ideas Mr. Doman had no
+difficulty in understanding by this uncommon epistle that Barney while
+performing his duty as grave digger had uncovered a quartz ledge with no
+outcroppings; that it was visibly rich in free gold; that, moved by
+considerations of friendship, he was willing to accept Mr. Doman as a
+partner and awaiting that gentleman's declaration of his will in the
+matter would discreetly keep the discovery a secret. From the postscript
+it was plainly inferable that in order to conceal the treasure he had
+buried above it the mortal part of a person named Scarry.
+
+From subsequent events, as related to Mr. Doman at Red Dog, it would
+appear that before taking this precaution Mr. Bree must have had the
+thrift to remove a modest competency of the gold; at any rate, it was at
+about that time that he entered upon that memorable series of potations
+and treatings which is still one of the cherished traditions of the San
+Juan Smith country, and is spoken of with respect as far away as Ghost
+Rock and Lone Hand. At its conclusion some former citizens of
+Hurdy-Gurdy, for whom he had performed the last kindly office at the
+cemetery, made room for him among them, and he rested well.
+
+IV
+
+Having finished staking off his claim Mr. Doman walked back to the
+centre of it and stood again at the spot where his search among the
+graves had expired in the exclamation, "Scarry." He bent again over the
+headboard that bore that name and as if to reinforce the senses of sight
+and hearing ran his forefinger along the rudely carved letters.
+Re-erecting himself he appended orally to the simple inscription the
+shockingly forthright epitaph, "She was a holy terror!"
+
+Had Mr. Doman been required to make these words good with proof--as,
+considering their somewhat censorious character, he doubtless should
+have been--he would have found himself embarrassed by the absence of
+reputable witnesses, and hearsay evidence would have been the best he
+could command. At the time when Scarry had been prevalent in the mining
+camps thereabout--when, as the editor of the _Hurdy Herald_ would have
+phrased it, she was "in the plenitude of her power"--Mr. Doman's
+fortunes had been at a low ebb, and he had led the vagrantly laborious
+life of a prospector. His time had been mostly spent in the mountains,
+now with one companion, now with another. It was from the admiring
+recitals of these casual partners, fresh from the various camps, that
+his judgment of Scarry had been made up; he himself had never had the
+doubtful advantage of her acquaintance and the precarious distinction of
+her favor. And when, finally, on the termination of her perverse career
+at Hurdy-Gurdy he had read in a chance copy of the _Herald_ her
+column-long obituary (written by the local humorist of that lively sheet
+in the highest style of his art) Doman had paid to her memory and to her
+historiographer's genius the tribute of a smile and chivalrously
+forgotten her. Standing now at the grave-side of this mountain Messalina
+he recalled the leading events of her turbulent career, as he had heard
+them celebrated at his several campfires, and perhaps with an
+unconscious attempt at self-justification repeated that she was a holy
+terror, and sank his pick into her grave up to the handle. At that
+moment a raven, which had silently settled upon a branch of the blasted
+tree above his head, solemnly snapped its beak and uttered its mind
+about the matter with an approving croak.
+
+Pursuing his discovery of free gold with great zeal, which he probably
+credited to his conscience as a grave digger, Mr. Barney Bree had made
+an unusually deep sepulcher, and it was near sunset before Mr. Doman,
+laboring with the leisurely deliberation of one who has "a dead sure
+thing" and no fear of an adverse claimant's enforcement of a prior
+right, reached the coffin and uncovered it. When he had done so he was
+confronted by a difficulty for which he had made no provision; the
+coffin--a mere flat shell of not very well-preserved redwood boards,
+apparently--had no handles, and it filled the entire bottom of the
+excavation. The best he could do without violating the decent sanctities
+of the situation was to make the excavation sufficiently longer to
+enable him to stand at the head of the casket and getting his powerful
+hands underneath erect it upon its narrower end; and this he proceeded
+to do. The approach of night quickened his efforts. He had no thought of
+abandoning his task at this stage to resume it on the morrow under more
+advantageous conditions. The feverish stimulation of cupidity and the
+fascination of terror held him to his dismal work with an iron
+authority. He no longer idled, but wrought with a terrible zeal. His
+head uncovered, his outer garments discarded, his shirt opened at the
+neck and thrown back from his breast, down which ran sinuous rills of
+perspiration, this hardy and impenitent gold-getter and grave-robber
+toiled with a giant energy that almost dignified the character of his
+horrible purpose; and when the sun fringes had burned themselves out
+along the crest line of the western hills, and the full moon had climbed
+out of the shadows that lay along the purple plain, he had erected the
+coffin upon its foot, where it stood propped against the end of the open
+grave. Then, standing up to his neck in the earth at the opposite
+extreme of the excavation, as he looked at the coffin upon which the
+moonlight now fell with a full illumination he was thrilled with a
+sudden terror to observe upon it the startling apparition of a dark
+human head--the shadow of his own. For a moment this simple and natural
+circumstance unnerved him. The noise of his labored breathing frightened
+him, and he tried to still it, but his bursting lungs would not be
+denied. Then, laughing half-audibly and wholly without spirit, he began
+making movements of his head from side to side, in order to compel the
+apparition to repeat them. He found a comforting reassurance in
+asserting his command over his own shadow. He was temporizing, making,
+with unconscious prudence, a dilatory opposition to an impending
+catastrophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil were closing in upon
+him, and he parleyed for time with the Inevitable.
+
+He now observed in succession several unusual circumstances. The surface
+of the coffin upon which his eyes were fastened was not flat; it
+presented two distinct ridges, one longitudinal and the other
+transverse. Where these intersected at the widest part there was a
+corroded metallic plate that reflected the moonlight with a dismal
+lustre. Along the outer edges of the coffin, at long intervals, were
+rust-eaten heads of nails. This frail product of the carpenter's art had
+been put into the grave the wrong side up!
+
+Perhaps it was one of the humors of the camp--a practical manifestation
+of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the
+topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great
+humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable
+to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable
+hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr.
+Barney Bree, who, making the interment unassisted (either by choice for
+the conservation of his golden secret, or through public apathy), had
+committed a blunder which he was afterward unable or unconcerned to
+rectify. However it had come about, poor Scarry had indubitably been put
+into the earth face downward.
+
+When terror and absurdity make alliance, the effect is frightful. This
+strong-hearted and daring man, this hardy night worker among the dead,
+this defiant antagonist of darkness and desolation, succumbed to a
+ridiculous surprise. He was smitten with a thrilling chill--shivered,
+and shook his massive shoulders as if to throw off an icy hand. He no
+longer breathed, and the blood in his veins, unable to abate its
+impetus, surged hotly beneath his cold skin. Unleavened with oxygen, it
+mounted to his head and congested his brain. His physical functions had
+gone over to the enemy; his very heart was arrayed against him. He did
+not move; he could not have cried out. He needed but a coffin to be
+dead--as dead as the death that confronted him with only the length of
+an open grave and the thickness of a rotting plank between.
+
+Then, one by one, his senses returned; the tide of terror that had
+overwhelmed his faculties began to recede. But with the return of his
+senses he became singularly unconscious of the object of his fear. He
+saw the moonlight gilding the coffin, but no longer the coffin that it
+gilded. Raising his eyes and turning his head, he noted, curiously and
+with surprise, the black branches of the dead tree, and tried to
+estimate the length of the weather-worn rope that dangled from its
+ghostly hand. The monotonous barking of distant coyotes affected him as
+something he had heard years ago in a dream. An owl flapped awkwardly
+above him on noiseless wings, and he tried to forecast the direction of
+its flight when it should encounter the cliff that reared its
+illuminated front a mile away. His hearing took account of a gopher's
+stealthy tread in the shadow of the cactus. He was intensely observant;
+his senses were all alert; but he saw not the coffin. As one can gaze at
+the sun until it looks black and then vanishes, so his mind, having
+exhausted its capacities of dread, was no longer conscious of the
+separate existence of anything dreadful. The Assassin was cloaking the
+sword.
+
+It was during this lull in the battle that he became sensible of a
+faint, sickening odor. At first he thought it was that of a
+rattle-snake, and involuntarily tried to look about his feet. They were
+nearly invisible in the gloom of the grave. A hoarse, gurgling sound,
+like the death-rattle in a human throat, seemed to come out of the sky,
+and a moment later a great, black, angular shadow, like the same sound
+made visible, dropped curving from the topmost branch of the spectral
+tree, fluttered for an instant before his face and sailed fiercely away
+into the mist along the creek.
+
+It was the raven. The incident recalled him to a sense of the situation,
+and again his eyes sought the upright coffin, now illuminated by the
+moon for half its length. He saw the gleam of the metallic plate and
+tried without moving to decipher the inscription. Then he fell to
+speculating upon what was behind it. His creative imagination presented
+him a vivid picture. The planks no longer seemed an obstacle to his
+vision and he saw the livid corpse of the dead woman, standing in
+grave-clothes, and staring vacantly at him, with lidless, shrunken eyes.
+The lower jaw was fallen, the upper lip drawn away from the uncovered
+teeth. He could make out a mottled pattern on the hollow cheeks--the
+maculations of decay. By some mysterious process his mind reverted for
+the first time that day to the photograph of Mary Matthews. He
+contrasted its blonde beauty with the forbidding aspect of this dead
+face--the most beloved object that he knew with the most hideous that he
+could conceive.
+
+The Assassin now advanced and displaying the blade laid it against the
+victim's throat. That is to say, the man became at first dimly, then
+definitely, aware of an impressive coincidence--a relation--a parallel
+between the face on the card and the name on the headboard. The one was
+disfigured, the other described a disfiguration. The thought took hold
+of him and shook him. It transformed the face that his imagination had
+created behind the coffin lid; the contrast became a resemblance; the
+resemblance grew to identity. Remembering the many descriptions of
+Scarry's personal appearance that he had heard from the gossips of his
+camp-fire he tried with imperfect success to recall the exact nature of
+the disfiguration that had given the woman her ugly name; and what was
+lacking in his memory fancy supplied, stamping it with the validity of
+conviction. In the maddening attempt to recall such scraps of the
+woman's history as he had heard, the muscles of his arms and hands were
+strained to a painful tension, as by an effort to lift a great weight.
+His body writhed and twisted with the exertion. The tendons of his neck
+stood out as tense as whip-cords, and his breath came in short, sharp
+gasps. The catastrophe could not be much longer delayed, or the agony of
+anticipation would leave nothing to be done by the _coup de grace_ of
+verification. The scarred face behind the lid would slay him through the
+wood.
+
+A movement of the coffin diverted his thought. It came forward to within
+a foot of his face, growing visibly larger as it approached. The rusted
+metallic plate, with an inscription illegible in the moonlight, looked
+him steadily in the eye. Determined not to shrink, he tried to brace his
+shoulders more firmly against the end of the excavation, and nearly fell
+backward in the attempt. There was nothing to support him; he had
+unconsciously moved upon his enemy, clutching the heavy knife that he
+had drawn from his belt. The coffin had not advanced and he smiled to
+think it could not retreat. Lifting his knife he struck the heavy hilt
+against the metal plate with all his power. There was a sharp, ringing
+percussion, and with a dull clatter the whole decayed coffin lid broke
+in pieces and came away, falling about his feet. The quick and the dead
+were face to face--the frenzied, shrieking man--the woman standing
+tranquil in her silences. She was a holy terror!
+
+V
+
+Some months later a party of men and women belonging to the highest
+social circles of San Francisco passed through Hurdy-Gurdy on their way
+to the Yosemite Valley by a new trail. They halted for dinner and during
+its preparation explored the desolate camp. One of the party had been at
+Hurdy-Gurdy in the days of its glory. He had, indeed, been one of its
+prominent citizens; and it used to be said that more money passed over
+his faro table in any one night than over those of all his competitors
+in a week; but being now a millionaire engaged in greater enterprises,
+he did not deem these early successes of sufficient importance to merit
+the distinction of remark. His invalid wife, a lady famous in San
+Francisco for the costly nature of her entertainments and her exacting
+rigor with regard to the social position and "antecedents" of those who
+attended them, accompanied the expedition. During a stroll among the
+shanties of the abandoned camp Mr. Porfer directed the attention of his
+wife and friends to a dead tree on a low hill beyond Injun Creek.
+
+"As I told you," he said, "I passed through this camp in 1852, and was
+told that no fewer than five men had been hanged here by vigilantes at
+different times, and all on that tree. If I am not mistaken, a rope is
+dangling from it yet. Let us go over and see the place."
+
+Mr. Porfer did not add that the rope in question was perhaps the very
+one from whose fatal embrace his own neck had once had an escape so
+narrow that an hour's delay in taking himself out of that region would
+have spanned it.
+
+Proceeding leisurely down the creek to a convenient crossing, the party
+came upon the cleanly picked skeleton of an animal which Mr. Porfer
+after due examination pronounced to be that of an ass. The
+distinguishing ears were gone, but much of the inedible head had been
+spared by the beasts and birds, and the stout bridle of horsehair was
+intact, as was the riata, of similar material, connecting it with a
+picket pin still firmly sunken in the earth. The wooden and metallic
+elements of a miner's kit lay near by. The customary remarks were made,
+cynical on the part of the men, sentimental and refined by the lady. A
+little later they stood by the tree in the cemetery and Mr. Porfer
+sufficiently unbent from his dignity to place himself beneath the rotten
+rope and confidently lay a coil of it about his neck, somewhat, it
+appeared, to his own satisfaction, but greatly to the horror of his
+wife, to whose sensibilities the performance gave a smart shock.
+
+An exclamation from one of the party gathered them all about an open
+grave, at the bottom of which they saw a confused mass of human bones
+and the broken remnants of a coffin. Coyotes and buzzards had performed
+the last sad rites for pretty much all else. Two skulls were visible and
+in order to investigate this somewhat unusual redundancy one of the
+younger men had the hardihood to spring into the grave and hand them up
+to another before Mrs. Porfer could indicate her marked disapproval of
+so shocking an act, which, nevertheless, she did with considerable
+feeling and in very choice words. Pursuing his search among the dismal
+debris at the bottom of the grave the young man next handed up a rusted
+coffin plate, with a rudely cut inscription, which with difficulty Mr.
+Porfer deciphered and read aloud with an earnest and not altogether
+unsuccessful attempt at the dramatic effect which he deemed befitting to
+the occasion and his rhetorical abilities:
+
+  MANUELITA MURPHY.
+  Born at the Mission San Pedro--Died in
+  Hurdy-Gurdy,
+  Aged 47.
+  Hell's full of such.
+
+In deference to the piety of the reader and the nerves of Mrs. Porfer's
+fastidious sisterhood of both sexes let us not touch upon the painful
+impression produced by this uncommon inscription, further than to say
+that the elocutionary powers of Mr. Porfer had never before met with so
+spontaneous and overwhelming recognition.
+
+The next morsel that rewarded the ghoul in the grave was a long tangle
+of black hair defiled with clay: but this was such an anti-climax that
+it received little attention. Suddenly, with a short exclamation and a
+gesture of excitement, the young man unearthed a fragment of grayish
+rock, and after a hurried inspection handed it up to Mr. Porfer. As the
+sunlight fell upon it it glittered with a yellow luster--it was thickly
+studded with gleaming points. Mr. Porfer snatched it, bent his head over
+it a moment and threw it lightly away with the simple remark:
+
+"Iron pyrites--fool's gold."
+
+The young man in the discovery shaft was a trifle disconcerted,
+apparently.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Porfer, unable longer to endure the disagreeable
+business, had walked back to the tree and seated herself at its root.
+While rearranging a tress of golden hair which had slipped from its
+confinement she was attracted by what appeared to be and really was the
+fragment of an old coat. Looking about to assure herself that so
+unladylike an act was not observed, she thrust her jeweled hand into the
+exposed breast pocket and drew out a mouldy pocket-book. Its contents
+were as follows:
+
+One bundle of letters, postmarked "Elizabethtown, New Jersey."
+
+One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon.
+
+One photograph of a beautiful girl.
+
+One ditto of same, singularly disfigured.
+
+One name on back of photograph--"Jefferson Doman."
+
+A few moments later a group of anxious gentlemen surrounded Mrs. Porfer
+as she sat motionless at the foot of the tree, her head dropped forward,
+her fingers clutching a crushed photograph. Her husband raised her head,
+exposing a face ghastly white, except the long, deforming cicatrice,
+familiar to all her friends, which no art could ever hide, and which now
+traversed the pallor of her countenance like a visible curse.
+
+Mary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to be dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS
+
+THE NIGHT
+
+One midsummer night a farmer's boy living about ten miles from the city
+of Cincinnati was following a bridle path through a dense and dark
+forest. He had lost himself while searching for some missing cows, and
+near midnight was a long way from home, in a part of the country with
+which he was unfamiliar. But he was a stout-hearted lad, and knowing his
+general direction from his home, he plunged into the forest without
+hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into the bridle path, and
+observing that it ran in the right direction, he followed it.
+
+The night was clear, but in the woods it was exceedingly dark. It was
+more by the sense of touch than by that of sight that the lad kept the
+path. He could not, indeed, very easily go astray; the undergrowth on
+both sides was so thick as to be almost impenetrable. He had gone into
+the forest a mile or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam of
+light shining through the foliage skirting the path on his left. The
+sight of it startled him and set his heart beating audibly.
+
+"The old Breede house is somewhere about here," he said to himself.
+"This must be the other end of the path which we reach it by from our
+side. Ugh! what should a light be doing there?"
+
+Nevertheless, he pushed on. A moment later he had emerged from the
+forest into a small, open space, mostly upgrown to brambles. There were
+remnants of a rotting fence. A few yards from the trail, in the middle
+of the "clearing," was the house from which the light came, through an
+unglazed window. The window had once contained glass, but that and its
+supporting frame had long ago yielded to missiles flung by hands of
+venturesome boys to attest alike their courage and their hostility to
+the supernatural; for the Breede house bore the evil reputation of being
+haunted. Possibly it was not, but even the hardiest sceptic could not
+deny that it was deserted--which in rural regions is much the same
+thing.
+
+Looking at the mysterious dim light shining from the ruined window the
+boy remembered with apprehension that his own hand had assisted at the
+destruction. His penitence was of course poignant in proportion to its
+tardiness and inefficacy. He half expected to be set upon by all the
+unworldly and bodiless malevolences whom he had outraged by assisting to
+break alike their windows and their peace. Yet this stubborn lad,
+shaking in every limb, would not retreat. The blood in his veins was
+strong and rich with the iron of the frontiersman. He was but two
+removes from the generation that had subdued the Indian. He started to
+pass the house.
+
+As he was going by he looked in at the blank window space and saw a
+strange and terrifying sight,--the figure of a man seated in the centre
+of the room, at a table upon which lay some loose sheets of paper. The
+elbows rested on the table, the hands supporting the head, which was
+uncovered. On each side the fingers were pushed into the hair. The face
+showed dead-yellow in the light of a single candle a little to one side.
+The flame illuminated that side of the face, the other was in deep
+shadow. The man's eyes were fixed upon the blank window space with a
+stare in which an older and cooler observer might have discerned
+something of apprehension, but which seemed to the lad altogether
+soulless. He believed the man to be dead.
+
+The situation was horrible, but not with out its fascination. The boy
+stopped to note it all. He was weak, faint and trembling; he could feel
+the blood forsaking his face. Nevertheless, he set his teeth and
+resolutely advanced to the house. He had no conscious intention--it was
+the mere courage of terror. He thrust his white face forward into the
+illuminated opening. At that instant a strange, harsh cry, a shriek,
+broke upon the silence of the night--the note of a screech-owl. The man
+sprang to his feet, overturning the table and extinguishing the candle.
+The boy took to his heels.
+
+THE DAY BEFORE
+
+"Good-morning, Colston. I am in luck, it seems. You have often said that
+my commendation of your literary work was mere civility, and here you
+find me absorbed--actually merged--in your latest story in the
+_Messenger_. Nothing less shocking than your touch upon my shoulder
+would have roused me to consciousness."
+
+"The proof is stronger than you seem to know," replied the man
+addressed: "so keen is your eagerness to read my story that you are
+willing to renounce selfish considerations and forego all the pleasure
+that you could get from it."
+
+"I don't understand you," said the other, folding the newspaper that he
+held and putting it into his pocket. "You writers are a queer lot,
+anyhow. Come, tell me what I have done or omitted in this matter. In
+what way does the pleasure that I get, or might get, from your work
+depend on me?"
+
+"In many ways. Let me ask you how you would enjoy your breakfast if you
+took it in this street car. Suppose the phonograph so perfected as to be
+able to give you an entire opera,--singing, orchestration, and all; do
+you think you would get much pleasure out of it if you turned it on at
+your office during business hours? Do you really care for a serenade by
+Schubert when you hear it fiddled by an untimely Italian on a morning
+ferryboat? Are you always cocked and primed for enjoyment? Do you keep
+every mood on tap, ready to any demand? Let me remind you, sir, that the
+story which you have done me the honor to begin as a means of becoming
+oblivious to the discomfort of this car is a ghost story!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well! Has the reader no duties corresponding to his privileges? You
+have paid five cents for that newspaper. It is yours. You have the right
+to read it when and where you will. Much of what is in it is neither
+helped nor harmed by time and place and mood; some of it actually
+requires to be read at once--while it is fizzing. But my story is not of
+that character. It is not 'the very latest advices' from Ghostland. You
+are not expected to keep yourself _au courant_ with what is going on in
+the realm of spooks. The stuff will keep until you have leisure to put
+yourself into the frame of mind appropriate to the sentiment of the
+piece--which I respectfully submit that you cannot do in a street car,
+even if you are the only passenger. The solitude is not of the right
+sort. An author has rights which the reader is bound to respect."
+
+"For specific example?"
+
+"The right to the reader's undivided attention. To deny him this is
+immoral. To make him share your attention with the rattle of a street
+car, the moving panorama of the crowds on the sidewalks, and the
+buildings beyond--with any of the thousands of distractions which make
+our customary environment--is to treat him with gross injustice. By God,
+it is infamous!"
+
+The speaker had risen to his feet and was steadying himself by one of
+the straps hanging from the roof of the car. The other man looked up at
+him in sudden astonishment, wondering how so trivial a grievance could
+seem to justify so strong language. He saw that his friend's face was
+uncommonly pale and that his eyes glowed like living coals.
+
+"You know what I mean," continued the writer, impetuously crowding his
+words--"you know what I mean, Marsh. My stuff in this morning's
+_Messenger_ is plainly sub-headed 'A Ghost Story.' That is ample notice
+to all. Every honorable reader will understand it as prescribing by
+implication the conditions under which the work is to be read."
+
+The man addressed as Marsh winced a trifle, then asked with a smile:
+"What conditions? You know that I am only a plain business man who
+cannot be supposed to understand such things. How, when, where should I
+read your ghost story?"
+
+"In solitude--at night--by the light of a candle. There are certain
+emotions which a writer can easily enough excite--such as compassion or
+merriment. I can move you to tears or laughter under almost any
+circumstances. But for my ghost story to be effective you must be made
+to feel fear--at least a strong sense of the supernatural--and that is a
+difficult matter. I have a right to expect that if you read me at all
+you will give me a chance; that you will make yourself accessible to the
+emotion that I try to inspire."
+
+The car had now arrived at its terminus and stopped. The trip just
+completed was its first for the day and the conversation of the two
+early passengers had not been interrupted. The streets were yet silent
+and desolate; the house tops were just touched by the rising sun. As
+they stepped from the car and walked away together Marsh narrowly eyed
+his companion, who was reported, like most men of uncommon literary
+ability, to be addicted to various destructive vices. That is the
+revenge which dull minds take upon bright ones in resentment of their
+superiority. Mr. Colston was known as a man of genius. There are honest
+souls who believe that genius is a mode of excess. It was known that
+Colston did not drink liquor, but many said that he ate opium. Something
+in his appearance that morning--a certain wildness of the eyes, an
+unusual pallor, a thickness and rapidity of speech--were taken by Mr.
+Marsh to confirm the report. Nevertheless, he had not the self-denial to
+abandon a subject which he found interesting, however it might excite
+his friend.
+
+"Do you mean to say," he began, "that if I take the trouble to observe
+your directions--place myself in the conditions that you demand:
+solitude, night and a tallow candle--you can with your ghostly work give
+me an uncomfortable sense of the supernatural, as you call it? Can you
+accelerate my pulse, make me start at sudden noises, send a nervous
+chill along my spine and cause my hair to rise?"
+
+Colston turned suddenly and looked him squarely in the eyes as they
+walked. "You would not dare--you have not the courage," he said. He
+emphasized the words with a contemptuous gesture. "You are brave enough
+to read me in a street car, but--in a deserted house--alone--in the
+forest--at night! Bah! I have a manuscript in my pocket that would kill
+you."
+
+Marsh was angry. He knew himself courageous, and the words stung him.
+"If you know such a place," he said, "take me there to-night and leave
+me your story and a candle. Call for me when I've had time enough to
+read it and I'll tell you the entire plot and--kick you out of the
+place."
+
+That is how it occurred that the farmer's boy, looking in at an unglazed
+window of the Breede house, saw a man sitting in the light of a candle.
+
+THE DAY AFTER
+
+Late in the afternoon of the next day three men and a boy approached the
+Breede house from that point of the compass toward which the boy had
+fled the preceding night. The men were in high spirits; they talked very
+loudly and laughed. They made facetious and good-humored ironical
+remarks to the boy about his adventure, which evidently they did not
+believe in. The boy accepted their raillery with seriousness, making no
+reply. He had a sense of the fitness of things and knew that one who
+professes to have seen a dead man rise from his seat and blow out a
+candle is not a credible witness.
+
+Arriving at the house and finding the door unlocked, the party of
+investigators entered without ceremony. Leading out of the passage into
+which this door opened was another on the right and one on the left.
+They entered the room on the left--the one which had the blank front
+window. Here was the dead body of a man.
+
+It lay partly on one side, with the forearm beneath it, the cheek on the
+floor. The eyes were wide open; the stare was not an agreeable thing to
+encounter. The lower jaw had fallen; a little pool of saliva had
+collected beneath the mouth. An overthrown table, a partly burned
+candle, a chair and some paper with writing on it were all else that the
+room contained. The men looked at the body, touching the face in turn.
+The boy gravely stood at the head, assuming a look of ownership. It was
+the proudest moment of his life. One of the men said to him, "You're a
+good 'un"--a remark which was received by the two others with nods of
+acquiescence. It was Scepticism apologizing to Truth. Then one of the
+men took from the floor the sheet of manuscript and stepped to the
+window, for already the evening shadows were glooming the forest. The
+song of the whip-poor-will was heard in the distance and a monstrous
+beetle sped by the window on roaring wings and thundered away out of
+hearing. The man read:
+
+THE MANUSCRIPT
+
+  "Before committing the act which, rightly or wrongly, I have resolved
+  on and appearing before my Maker for judgment, I, James R. Colston,
+  deem it my duty as a journalist to make a statement to the public. My
+  name is, I believe, tolerably well known to the people as a writer of
+  tragic tales, but the somberest imagination never conceived anything
+  so tragic as my own life and history. Not in incident: my life has
+  been destitute of adventure and action. But my mental career has been
+  lurid with experiences such as kill and damn. I shall not recount them
+  here--some of them are written and ready for publication elsewhere.
+  The object of these lines is to explain to whomsoever may be
+  interested that my death is voluntary--my own act. I shall die at
+  twelve o'clock on the night of the 15th of July--a significant
+  anniversary to me, for it was on that day, and at that hour, that my
+  friend in time and eternity, Charles Breede, performed his vow to me
+  by the same act which his fidelity to our pledge now entails upon me.
+  He took his life in his little house in the Copeton woods. There was
+  the customary verdict of 'temporary insanity.' Had I testified at that
+  inquest--had I told all I knew, they would have called _me_ mad!"
+
+Here followed an evidently long passage which the man reading read to
+himself only. The rest he read aloud.
+
+  "I have still a week of life in which to arrange my worldly affairs
+  and prepare for the great change. It is enough, for I have but few
+  affairs and it is now four years since death became an imperative
+  obligation.
+
+  "I shall bear this writing on my body; the finder will please hand it
+  to the coroner.
+
+  "JAMES R. COLSTON.
+
+  "P.S.--Willard Marsh, on this the fatal fifteenth day of July I hand
+  you this manuscript, to be opened and read under the conditions agreed
+  upon, and at the place which I designated. I forego my intention to
+  keep it on my body to explain the manner of my death, which is not
+  important. It will serve to explain the manner of yours. I am to call
+  for you during the night to receive assurance that you have read the
+  manuscript. You know me well enough to expect me. But, my friend, it
+  _will be after twelve o'clock._ May God have mercy on our souls!
+
+  "J.R.C."
+
+Before the man who was reading this manuscript had finished, the candle
+had been picked up and lighted. When the reader had done, he quietly
+thrust the paper against the flame and despite the protestations of the
+others held it until it was burnt to ashes. The man who did this, and
+who afterward placidly endured a severe reprimand from the coroner, was
+a son-in-law of the late Charles Breede. At the inquest nothing could
+elicit an intelligent account of what the paper had contained.
+
+FROM "THE TIMES"
+
+  "Yesterday the Commissioners of Lunacy committed to the asylum Mr.
+  James R. Colston, a writer of some local reputation, connected with
+  the _Messenger_. It will be remembered that on the evening of the 15th
+  inst. Mr. Colston was given into custody by one of his fellow-lodgers
+  in the Baine House, who had observed him acting very suspiciously,
+  baring his throat and whetting a razor--occasionally trying its edge
+  by actually cutting through the skin of his arm, etc. On being handed
+  over to the police, the unfortunate man made a desperate resistance,
+  and has ever since been so violent that it has been necessary to keep
+  him in a strait-jacket. Most of our esteemed contemporary's other
+  writers are still at large."
+
+
+
+
+THE BOARDED WINDOW
+
+In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of
+Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region
+was sparsely settled by people of the frontier--restless souls who no
+sooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness and
+attained to that degree of prosperity which to-day we should call
+indigence than impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature they
+abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and
+privations in the effort to regain the meagre comforts which they had
+voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for
+the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been
+of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on
+all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a
+part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word.
+His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild
+animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land
+which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed
+possession. There were evidences of "improvement"--a few acres of ground
+immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the
+decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had
+been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently the
+man's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in
+penitential ashes.
+
+The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping
+clapboards weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay,
+had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however,
+was boarded up--nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none
+knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's
+dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had
+passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning
+himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I
+fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of
+that window, but I am one, as you shall see.
+
+The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years
+old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his
+aging. His hair and long, full beard were white, his gray, lustreless
+eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared to
+belong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare,
+with a stoop of the shoulders--a burden bearer. I never saw him; these
+particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the
+man's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in
+that early day.
+
+One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and
+place for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he
+had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should
+remember. I know only that with what was probably a sense of the fitness
+of things the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of his
+wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition had
+retained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapter
+of this true story--excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years
+afterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to
+the place and ventured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone
+against it, and ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed
+boy thereabout knew haunted the spot. But there is an earlier chapter--
+that supplied by my grandfather.
+
+When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his ax
+to hew out a farm--the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support--he was
+young, strong and full of hope. In that eastern country whence he came
+he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of
+his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot
+with a willing spirit and light heart. There is no known record of her
+name; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and the
+doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I
+should share it! Of their affection and happiness there is abundant
+assurance in every added day of the man's widowed life; for what but the
+magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit
+to a lot like that?
+
+One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to
+find his wife prostrate with fever, and delirious. There was no
+physician within miles, no neighbor; nor was she in a condition to be
+left, to summon help. So he set about the task of nursing her back to
+health, but at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousness
+and so passed away, apparently, with never a gleam of returning reason.
+
+From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some
+of the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather. When
+convinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that
+the dead must be prepared for burial. In performance of this sacred duty
+he blundered now and again, did certain things incorrectly, and others
+which he did correctly were done over and over. His occasional failures
+to accomplish some simple and ordinary act filled him with astonishment,
+like that of a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of familiar
+natural laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep--surprised and
+a little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead.
+"To-morrow," he said aloud, "I shall have to make the coffin and dig the
+grave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight; but
+now--she is dead, of course, but it is all right--it _must_ be all
+right, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem."
+
+He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and
+putting the finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing all
+mechanically, with soulless care. And still through his consciousness
+ran an undersense of conviction that all was right--that he should have
+her again as before, and everything explained. He had had no experience
+in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not
+contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know
+he was so hard struck; _that_ knowledge would come later, and never go.
+Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he
+plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest
+notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the
+slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it
+stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the
+sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon,
+which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way
+affected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that of
+conjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking into
+a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting how
+white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his arms upon
+the table's edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet and
+unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a
+long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the
+darkening wood! But the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before,
+sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild
+beast; perhaps it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep.
+
+Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcher
+awoke and lifting his head from his arms intently listened--he knew not
+why. There in the black darkness by the side of the dead, recalling all
+without a shock, he strained his eyes to see--he knew not what. His
+senses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilled
+its tides as if to assist the silence. Who--what had waked him, and
+where was it?
+
+Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he
+heard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step--another--sounds as
+of bare feet upon the floor!
+
+He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he
+waited--waited there in the darkness through seeming centuries of such
+dread as one may know, yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the
+dead woman's name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table to
+learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and hands
+were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy body
+seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against
+his breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same
+instant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with so
+violent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. A
+scuffling ensued, and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe.
+Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of
+his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!
+
+There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness
+incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the
+wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little
+groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the
+flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an
+enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth
+fixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, and
+silence; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the
+wood vocal with songs of birds.
+
+The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when
+frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was
+deranged, the long hair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the
+throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet
+entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was
+broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a
+fragment of the animal's ear.
+
+
+
+
+A LADY FROM REDHORSE
+
+CORONADO, JUNE 20.
+
+I find myself more and more interested in him. It is not, I am sure,
+his--do you know any good noun corresponding to the adjective
+"handsome"? One does not like to say "beauty" when speaking of a man. He
+is beautiful enough, Heaven knows; I should not even care to trust you
+with him--faithfulest of all possible wives that you are--when he looks
+his best, as he always does. Nor do I think the fascination of his
+manner has much to do with it. You recollect that the charm of art
+inheres in that which is undefinable, and to you and me, my dear Irene,
+I fancy there is rather less of that in the branch of art under
+consideration than to girls in their first season. I fancy I know how my
+fine gentleman produces many of his effects and could perhaps give him a
+pointer on heightening them. Nevertheless, his manner is something truly
+delightful. I suppose what interests me chiefly is the man's brains. His
+conversation is the best I have ever heard and altogether unlike any one
+else's. He seems to know everything, as indeed he ought, for he has been
+everywhere, read everything, seen all there is to see--sometimes I think
+rather more than is good for him--and had acquaintance with the
+_queerest_ people. And then his voice--Irene, when I hear it I actually
+feel as if I ought to have paid at the door, though of course it is my
+own door.
+
+JULY 3.
+
+I fear my remarks about Dr. Barritz must have been, being thoughtless,
+very silly, or you would not have written of him with such levity, not
+to say disrespect. Believe me, dearest, he has more dignity and
+seriousness (of the kind, I mean, which is not inconsistent with a
+manner sometimes playful and always charming) than any of the men that
+you and I ever met. And young Raynor--you knew Raynor at Monterey--tells
+me that the men all like him and that he is treated with something like
+deference everywhere. There is a mystery, too--something about his
+connection with the Blavatsky people in Northern India. Raynor either
+would not or could not tell me the particulars. I infer that Dr. Barritz
+is thought--don't you dare to laugh!--a magician. Could anything be
+finer than that?
+
+An ordinary mystery is not, of course, so good as a scandal, but when it
+relates to dark and dreadful practices--to the exercise of unearthly
+powers--could anything be more piquant? It explains, too, the singular
+influence the man has upon me. It is the undefinable in his art--black
+art. Seriously, dear, I quite tremble when he looks me full in the eyes
+with those unfathomable orbs of his, which I have already vainly
+attempted to describe to you. How dreadful if he has the power to make
+one fall in love! Do you know if the Blavatsky crowd have that power--
+outside of Sepoy?
+
+JULY 16.
+
+The strangest thing! Last evening while Auntie was attending one of the
+hotel hops (I hate them) Dr. Barritz called. It was scandalously late--I
+actually believe that he had talked with Auntie in the ballroom and
+learned from her that I was alone. I had been all the evening contriving
+how to worm out of him the truth about his connection with the Thugs in
+Sepoy, and all of that black business, but the moment he fixed his eyes
+on me (for I admitted him, I'm ashamed to say) I was helpless. I
+trembled, I blushed, I--O Irene, Irene, I love the man beyond expression
+and you know how it is yourself.
+
+Fancy! I, an ugly duckling from Redhorse--daughter (they say) of old
+Calamity Jim--certainly his heiress, with no living relation but an
+absurd old aunt who spoils me a thousand and fifty ways--absolutely
+destitute of everything but a million dollars and a hope in Paris,--I
+daring to love a god like him! My dear, if I had you here I could tear
+your hair out with mortification.
+
+I am convinced that he is aware of my feeling, for he stayed but a few
+moments, said nothing but what another man might have said half as well,
+and pretending that he had an engagement went away. I learned to-day (a
+little bird told me--the bell-bird) that he went straight to bed. How
+does that strike you as evidence of exemplary habits?
+
+JULY 17.
+
+That little wretch, Raynor, called yesterday and his babble set me
+almost wild. He never runs down--that is to say, when he exterminates a
+score of reputations, more or less, he does not pause between one
+reputation and the next. (By the way, he inquired about you, and his
+manifestations of interest in you had, I confess, a good deal of
+_vraisemblance._.) Mr. Raynor observes no game laws; like Death (which
+he would inflict if slander were fatal) he has all seasons for his own.
+But I like him, for we knew each other at Redhorse when we were young.
+He was known in those days as "Giggles," and I--O Irene, can you ever
+forgive me?--I was called "Gunny." God knows why; perhaps in allusion to
+the material of my pinafores; perhaps because the name is in
+alliteration with "Giggles," for Gig and I were inseparable playmates,
+and the miners may have thought it a delicate civility to recognize some
+kind of relationship between us.
+
+Later, we took in a third--another of Adversity's brood, who, like
+Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, had a chronic inability to
+adjudicate the rival claims of Frost and Famine. Between him and misery
+there was seldom anything more than a single suspender and the hope of a
+meal which would at the same time support life and make it
+insupportable. He literally picked up a precarious living for himself
+and an aged mother by "chloriding the dumps," that is to say, the miners
+permitted him to search the heaps of waste rock for such pieces of "pay
+ore" as had been overlooked; and these he sacked up and sold at the
+Syndicate Mill. He became a member of our firm--"Gunny, Giggles, and
+Dumps" thenceforth--through my favor; for I could not then, nor can I
+now, be indifferent to his courage and prowess in defending against
+Giggles the immemorial right of his sex to insult a strange and
+unprotected female--myself. After old Jim struck it in the Calamity and
+I began to wear shoes and go to school, and in emulation Giggles took to
+washing his face and became Jack Raynor, of Wells, Fargo & Co., and old
+Mrs. Barts was herself chlorided to her fathers, Dumps drifted over to
+San Juan Smith and turned stage driver, and was killed by road agents,
+and so forth.
+
+Why do I tell you all this, dear? Because it is heavy on my heart.
+Because I walk the Valley of Humility. Because I am subduing myself to
+permanent consciousness of my unworthiness to unloose the latchet of Dr.
+Barritz's shoe. Because, oh dear, oh dear, there's a cousin of Dumps at
+this hotel! I haven't spoken to him. I never had much acquaintance with
+him,--but do you suppose he has recognized me? Do, please give me in
+your next your candid, sure-enough opinion about it, and say you don't
+think so. Do you suppose He knows about me already, and that that is why
+He left me last evening when He saw that I blushed and trembled like a
+fool under His eyes? You know I can't bribe _all_ the newspapers, and I
+can't go back on anybody who was civil to Gunny at Redhorse--not if I'm
+pitched out of society into the sea. So the skeleton sometimes rattles
+behind the door. I never cared much before, as you know, but now--_now_
+it is not the same. Jack Raynor I am sure of--he will not tell Him. He
+seems, indeed, to hold Him in such respect as hardly to dare speak to
+Him at all, and I'm a good deal that way myself. Dear, dear! I wish I
+had something besides a million dollars! If Jack were three inches
+taller I'd marry him alive and go back to Redhorse and wear sackcloth
+again to the end of my miserable days.
+
+JULY 25.
+
+We had a perfectly splendid sunset last evening and I must tell you all
+about it. I ran away from Auntie and everybody and was walking alone on
+the beach. I expect you to believe, you infidel! that I had not looked
+out of my window on the seaward side of the hotel and seen Him walking
+alone on the beach. If you are not lost to every feeling of womanly
+delicacy you will accept my statement without question. I soon
+established myself under my sunshade and had for some time been gazing
+out dreamily over the sea, when he approached, walking close to the edge
+of the water--it was ebb tide. I assure you the wet sand actually
+brightened about his feet! As he approached me he lifted his hat,
+saying, "Miss Dement, may I sit with you?--or will you walk with me?"
+
+The possibility that neither might be agreeable seems not to have
+occurred to him. Did you ever know such assurance? Assurance? My dear,
+it was gall, downright _gall!_ Well, I didn't find it wormwood, and
+replied, with my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat, "I--I shall be
+pleased to do _anything_." Could words have been more stupid? There are
+depths of fatuity in me, friend o' my soul, that are simply bottomless!
+
+He extended his hand, smiling, and I delivered mine into it without a
+moment's hesitation, and when his fingers closed about it to assist me
+to my feet the consciousness that it trembled made me blush worse than
+the red west. I got up, however, and after a while, observing that he
+had not let go my hand I pulled on it a little, but unsuccessfully. He
+simply held on, saying nothing, but looking down into my face with some
+kind of smile--I didn't know--how could I?--whether it was affectionate,
+derisive, or what, for I did not look at him. How beautiful he was!--
+with the red fires of the sunset burning in the depths of his eyes. Do
+you know, dear, if the Thugs and Experts of the Blavatsky region have
+any special kind of eyes? Ah, you should have seen his superb attitude,
+the god-like inclination of his head as he stood over me after I had got
+upon my feet! It was a noble picture, but I soon destroyed it, for I
+began at once to sink again to the earth. There was only one thing for
+him to do, and he did it; he supported me with an arm about my waist.
+
+"Miss Dement, are you ill?" he said.
+
+It was not an exclamation; there was neither alarm nor solicitude in it.
+If he had added: "I suppose that is about what I am expected to say," he
+would hardly have expressed his sense of the situation more clearly. His
+manner filled me with shame and indignation, for I was suffering
+acutely. I wrenched my hand out of his, grasped the arm supporting me
+and pushing myself free, fell plump into the sand and sat helpless. My
+hat had fallen off in the struggle and my hair tumbled about my face and
+shoulders in the most mortifying way.
+
+"Go away from me," I cried, half choking. "O _please_ go away, you--you
+Thug! How dare you think _that_ when my leg is asleep?"
+
+I actually said those identical words! And then I broke down and sobbed.
+Irene, I _blubbered_!
+
+His manner altered in an instant--I could see that much through my
+fingers and hair. He dropped on one knee beside me, parted the tangle of
+hair and said in the tenderest way: "My poor girl, God knows I have not
+intended to pain you. How should I?--I who love you--I who have loved
+you for--for years and years!"
+
+He had pulled my wet hands away from my face and was covering them with
+kisses. My cheeks were like two coals, my whole face was flaming and, I
+think, steaming. What could I do? I hid it on his shoulder--there was no
+other place. And, O my dear friend, how my leg tingled and thrilled, and
+how I wanted to kick!
+
+We sat so for a long time. He had released one of my hands to pass his
+arm about me again and I possessed myself of my handkerchief and was
+drying my eyes and my nose. I would not look up until that was done; he
+tried in vain to push me a little away and gaze into my face. Presently,
+when all was right, and it had grown a bit dark, I lifted my head,
+looked him straight in the eyes and smiled my best--my level best, dear.
+
+"What do you mean," I said, "by 'years and years'?"
+
+"Dearest," he replied, very gravely, very earnestly, "in the absence of
+the sunken cheeks, the hollow eyes, the lank hair, the slouching gait,
+the rags, dirt, and youth, can you not--will you not understand? Gunny,
+I'm Dumps!"
+
+In a moment I was upon my feet and he upon his. I seized him by the
+lapels of his coat and peered into his handsome face in the deepening
+darkness. I was breathless with excitement.
+
+"And you are not dead?" I asked, hardly knowing what I said.
+
+"Only dead in love, dear. I recovered from the road agent's bullet, but
+this, I fear, is fatal."
+
+"But about Jack--Mr. Raynor? Don't you know--"
+
+"I am ashamed to say, darling, that it was through that unworthy
+person's suggestion that I came here from Vienna."
+
+Irene, they have roped in your affectionate friend,
+
+                   MARY JANE DEMENT.
+
+P.S.--The worst of it is that there is no mystery; that was the
+invention of Jack Raynor, to arouse my curiosity. James is not a Thug.
+He solemnly assures me that in all his wanderings he has never set foot
+in Sepoy.
+
+
+
+
+THE EYES OF THE PANTHER
+
+I
+
+ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS MARRY WHEN INSANE
+
+A man and a woman--nature had done the grouping--sat on a rustic seat,
+in the late afternoon. The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy, with
+the expression of a poet and the complexion of a pirate--a man at whom
+one would look again. The woman was young, blonde, graceful, with
+something in her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe." She
+was habited in a gray gown with odd brown markings in the texture. She
+may have been beautiful; one could not readily say, for her eyes denied
+attention to all else. They were gray-green, long and narrow, with an
+expression defying analysis. One could only know that they were
+disquieting. Cleopatra may have had such eyes.
+
+The man and the woman talked.
+
+"Yes," said the woman, "I love you, God knows! But marry you, no. I
+cannot, will not."
+
+"Irene, you have said that many times, yet always have denied me a
+reason. I've a right to know, to understand, to feel and prove my
+fortitude if I have it. Give me a reason."
+
+"For loving you?"
+
+The woman was smiling through her tears and her pallor. That did not
+stir any sense of humor in the man.
+
+"No; there is no reason for that. A reason for not marrying me. I've a
+right to know. I must know. I will know!"
+
+He had risen and was standing before her with clenched hands, on his
+face a frown--it might have been called a scowl. He looked as if he
+might attempt to learn by strangling her. She smiled no more--merely sat
+looking up into his face with a fixed, set regard that was utterly
+without emotion or sentiment. Yet it had something in it that tamed his
+resentment and made him shiver.
+
+"You are determined to have my reason?" she asked in a tone that was
+entirely mechanical--a tone that might have been her look made audible.
+
+"If you please--if I'm not asking too much."
+
+Apparently this lord of creation was yielding some part of his dominion
+over his co-creature.
+
+"Very well, you shall know: I am insane."
+
+The man started, then looked incredulous and was conscious that he ought
+to be amused. But, again, the sense of humor failed him in his need and
+despite his disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which he did
+not believe. Between our convictions and our feelings there is no good
+understanding.
+
+"That is what the physicians would say," the woman continued--"if they
+knew. I might myself prefer to call it a case of 'possession.' Sit down
+and hear what I have to say."
+
+The man silently resumed his seat beside her on the rustic bench by the
+wayside. Over-against them on the eastern side of the valley the hills
+were already sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of that
+peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its
+mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's
+mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages
+of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of
+the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes
+always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story
+told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice
+against the artless method of an unpractised historian the author
+ventures to substitute his own version for hers.
+
+II
+
+A ROOM MAY BE TOO NARROW FOR THREE, THOUGH ONE IS OUTSIDE
+
+In a little log house containing a single room sparely and rudely
+furnished, crouching on the floor against one of the walls, was a woman,
+clasping to her breast a child. Outside, a dense unbroken forest
+extended for many miles in every direction. This was at night and the
+room was black dark: no human eye could have discerned the woman and the
+child. Yet they were observed, narrowly, vigilantly, with never even a
+momentary slackening of attention; and that is the pivotal fact upon
+which this narrative turns.
+
+Charles Marlowe was of the class, now extinct in this country, of
+woodmen pioneers--men who found their most acceptable surroundings in
+sylvan solitudes that stretched along the eastern slope of the
+Mississippi Valley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. For more
+than a hundred years these men pushed ever westward, generation after
+generation, with rifle and ax, reclaiming from Nature and her savage
+children here and there an isolated acreage for the plow, no sooner
+reclaimed than surrendered to their less venturesome but more thrifty
+successors. At last they burst through the edge of the forest into the
+open country and vanished as if they had fallen over a cliff. The
+woodman pioneer is no more; the pioneer of the plains--he whose easy
+task it was to subdue for occupancy two-thirds of the country in a
+single generation--is another and inferior creation. With Charles
+Marlowe in the wilderness, sharing the dangers, hardships and privations
+of that strange, unprofitable life, were his wife and child, to whom, in
+the manner of his class, in which the domestic virtues were a religion,
+he was passionately attached. The woman was still young enough to be
+comely, new enough to the awful isolation of her lot to be cheerful. By
+withholding the large capacity for happiness which the simple
+satisfactions of the forest life could not have filled, Heaven had dealt
+honorably with her. In her light household tasks, her child, her husband
+and her few foolish books, she found abundant provision for her needs.
+
+One morning in midsummer Marlowe took down his rifle from the wooden
+hooks on the wall and signified his intention of getting game.
+
+"We've meat enough," said the wife; "please don't go out to-day. I
+dreamed last night, O, such a dreadful thing! I cannot recollect it, but
+I'm almost sure that it will come to pass if you go out."
+
+It is painful to confess that Marlowe received this solemn statement
+with less of gravity than was due to the mysterious nature of the
+calamity foreshadowed. In truth, he laughed.
+
+"Try to remember," he said. "Maybe you dreamed that Baby had lost the
+power of speech."
+
+The conjecture was obviously suggested by the fact that Baby, clinging
+to the fringe of his hunting-coat with all her ten pudgy thumbs was at
+that moment uttering her sense of the situation in a series of exultant
+goo-goos inspired by sight of her father's raccoon-skin cap.
+
+The woman yielded: lacking the gift of humor she could not hold out
+against his kindly badinage. So, with a kiss for the mother and a kiss
+for the child, he left the house and closed the door upon his happiness
+forever.
+
+At nightfall he had not returned. The woman prepared supper and waited.
+Then she put Baby to bed and sang softly to her until she slept. By this
+time the fire on the hearth, at which she had cooked supper, had burned
+out and the room was lighted by a single candle. This she afterward
+placed in the open window as a sign and welcome to the hunter if he
+should approach from that side. She had thoughtfully closed and barred
+the door against such wild animals as might prefer it to an open window
+--of the habits of beasts of prey in entering a house uninvited she was
+not advised, though with true female prevision she may have considered
+the possibility of their entrance by way of the chimney. As the night
+wore on she became not less anxious, but more drowsy, and at last rested
+her arms upon the bed by the child and her head upon the arms. The
+candle in the window burned down to the socket, sputtered and flared a
+moment and went out unobserved; for the woman slept and dreamed.
+
+In her dreams she sat beside the cradle of a second child. The first one
+was dead. The father was dead. The home in the forest was lost and the
+dwelling in which she lived was unfamiliar. There were heavy oaken
+doors, always closed, and outside the windows, fastened into the thick
+stone walls, were iron bars, obviously (so she thought) a provision
+against Indians. All this she noted with an infinite self-pity, but
+without surprise--an emotion unknown in dreams. The child in the cradle
+was invisible under its coverlet which something impelled her to remove.
+She did so, disclosing the face of a wild animal! In the shock of this
+dreadful revelation the dreamer awoke, trembling in the darkness of her
+cabin in the wood.
+
+As a sense of her actual surroundings came slowly back to her she felt
+for the child that was not a dream, and assured herself by its breathing
+that all was well with it; nor could she forbear to pass a hand lightly
+across its face. Then, moved by some impulse for which she probably
+could not have accounted, she rose and took the sleeping babe in her
+arms, holding it close against her breast. The head of the child's cot
+was against the wall to which the woman now turned her back as she
+stood. Lifting her eyes she saw two bright objects starring the darkness
+with a reddish-green glow. She took them to be two coals on the hearth,
+but with her returning sense of direction came the disquieting
+consciousness that they were not in that quarter of the room, moreover
+were too high, being nearly at the level of the eyes--of her own eyes.
+For these were the eyes of a panther.
+
+The beast was at the open window directly opposite and not five paces
+away. Nothing but those terrible eyes was visible, but in the dreadful
+tumult of her feelings as the situation disclosed itself to her
+understanding she somehow knew that the animal was standing on its
+hinder feet, supporting itself with its paws on the window-ledge. That
+signified a malign interest--not the mere gratification of an indolent
+curiosity. The consciousness of the attitude was an added horror,
+accentuating the menace of those awful eyes, in whose steadfast fire her
+strength and courage were alike consumed. Under their silent questioning
+she shuddered and turned sick. Her knees failed her, and by degrees,
+instinctively striving to avoid a sudden movement that might bring the
+beast upon her, she sank to the floor, crouched against the wall and
+tried to shield the babe with her trembling body without withdrawing her
+gaze from the luminous orbs that were killing her. No thought of her
+husband came to her in her agony--no hope nor suggestion of rescue or
+escape. Her capacity for thought and feeling had narrowed to the
+dimensions of a single emotion--fear of the animal's spring, of the
+impact of its body, the buffeting of its great arms, the feel of its
+teeth in her throat, the mangling of her babe. Motionless now and in
+absolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, to
+years, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch.
+
+Returning to his cabin late at night with a deer on his shoulders
+Charles Marlowe tried the door. It did not yield. He knocked; there was
+no answer. He laid down his deer and went round to the window. As he
+turned the angle of the building he fancied he heard a sound as of
+stealthy footfalls and a rustling in the undergrowth of the forest, but
+they were too slight for certainty, even to his practised ear.
+Approaching the window, and to his surprise finding it open, he threw
+his leg over the sill and entered. All was darkness and silence. He
+groped his way to the fire-place, struck a match and lit a candle.
+
+Then he looked about. Cowering on the floor against a wall was his wife,
+clasping his child. As he sprang toward her she rose and broke into
+laughter, long, loud, and mechanical, devoid of gladness and devoid of
+sense--the laughter that is not out of keeping with the clanking of a
+chain. Hardly knowing what he did he extended his arms. She laid the
+babe in them. It was dead--pressed to death in its mother's embrace.
+
+III
+
+THE THEORY OF THE DEFENSE
+
+That is what occurred during a night in a forest, but not all of it did
+Irene Marlowe relate to Jenner Brading; not all of it was known to her.
+When she had concluded the sun was below the horizon and the long summer
+twilight had begun to deepen in the hollows of the land. For some
+moments Brading was silent, expecting the narrative to be carried
+forward to some definite connection with the conversation introducing
+it; but the narrator was as silent as he, her face averted, her hands
+clasping and unclasping themselves as they lay in her lap, with a
+singular suggestion of an activity independent of her will.
+
+"It is a sad, a terrible story," said Brading at last, "but I do not
+understand. You call Charles Marlowe father; that I know. That he is old
+before his time, broken by some great sorrow, I have seen, or thought I
+saw. But, pardon me, you said that you--that you--"
+
+"That I am insane," said the girl, without a movement of head or body.
+
+"But, Irene, you say--please, dear, do not look away from me--you say
+that the child was dead, not demented."
+
+"Yes, that one--I am the second. I was born three months after that
+night, my mother being mercifully permitted to lay down her life in
+giving me mine."
+
+Brading was again silent; he was a trifle dazed and could not at once
+think of the right thing to say. Her face was still turned away. In his
+embarrassment he reached impulsively toward the hands that lay closing
+and unclosing in her lap, but something--he could not have said what--
+restrained him. He then remembered, vaguely, that he had never
+altogether cared to take her hand.
+
+"Is it likely," she resumed, "that a person born under such
+circumstances is like others--is what you call sane?"
+
+Brading did not reply; he was preoccupied with a new thought that was
+taking shape in his mind--what a scientist would have called an
+hypothesis; a detective, a theory. It might throw an added light, albeit
+a lurid one, upon such doubt of her sanity as her own assertion had not
+dispelled.
+
+The country was still new and, outside the villages, sparsely populated.
+The professional hunter was still a familiar figure, and among his
+trophies were heads and pelts of the larger kinds of game. Tales
+variously credible of nocturnal meetings with savage animals in lonely
+roads were sometimes current, passed through the customary stages of
+growth and decay, and were forgotten. A recent addition to these popular
+apocrypha, originating, apparently, by spontaneous generation in several
+households, was of a panther which had frightened some of their members
+by looking in at windows by night. The yarn had caused its little ripple
+of excitement--had even attained to the distinction of a place in the
+local newspaper; but Brading had given it no attention. Its likeness to
+the story to which he had just listened now impressed him as perhaps
+more than accidental. Was it not possible that the one story had
+suggested the other--that finding congenial conditions in a morbid mind
+and a fertile fancy, it had grown to the tragic tale that he had heard?
+
+Brading recalled certain circumstances of the girl's history and
+disposition, of which, with love's incuriosity, he had hitherto been
+heedless--such as her solitary life with her father, at whose house no
+one, apparently, was an acceptable visitor and her strange fear of the
+night, by which those who knew her best accounted for her never being
+seen after dark. Surely in such a mind imagination once kindled might
+burn with a lawless flame, penetrating and enveloping the entire
+structure. That she was mad, though the conviction gave him the acutest
+pain, he could no longer doubt; she had only mistaken an effect of her
+mental disorder for its cause, bringing into imaginary relation with her
+own personality the vagaries of the local myth-makers. With some vague
+intention of testing his new "theory," and no very definite notion of
+how to set about it he said, gravely, but with hesitation:
+
+"Irene, dear, tell me--I beg you will not take offence, but tell me--"
+
+"I have told you," she interrupted, speaking with a passionate
+earnestness that he had not known her to show--"I have already told you
+that we cannot marry; is anything else worth saying?"
+
+Before he could stop her she had sprung from her seat and without
+another word or look was gliding away among the trees toward her
+father's house. Brading had risen to detain her; he stood watching her
+in silence until she had vanished in the gloom. Suddenly he started as
+if he had been shot; his face took on an expression of amazement and
+alarm: in one of the black shadows into which she had disappeared he had
+caught a quick, brief glimpse of shining eyes! For an instant he was
+dazed and irresolute; then he dashed into the wood after her, shouting:
+"Irene, Irene, look out! The panther! The panther!"
+
+In a moment he had passed through the fringe of forest into open ground
+and saw the girl's gray skirt vanishing into her father's door. No
+panther was visible.
+
+IV
+
+AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF GOD
+
+Jenner Brading, attorney-at-law, lived in a cottage at the edge of the
+town. Directly behind the dwelling was the forest. Being a bachelor, and
+therefore, by the Draconian moral code of the time and place denied the
+services of the only species of domestic servant known thereabout, the
+"hired girl," he boarded at the village hotel, where also was his
+office. The woodside cottage was merely a lodging maintained--at no
+great cost, to be sure--as an evidence of prosperity and respectability.
+It would hardly do for one to whom the local newspaper had pointed with
+pride as "the foremost jurist of his time" to be "homeless," albeit he
+may sometimes have suspected that the words "home" and "house" were not
+strictly synonymous. Indeed, his consciousness of the disparity and his
+will to harmonize it were matters of logical inference, for it was
+generally reported that soon after the cottage was built its owner had
+made a futile venture in the direction of marriage--had, in truth, gone
+so far as to be rejected by the beautiful but eccentric daughter of Old
+Man Marlowe, the recluse. This was publicly believed because he had told
+it himself and she had not--a reversal of the usual order of things
+which could hardly fail to carry conviction.
+
+Brading's bedroom was at the rear of the house, with a single window
+facing the forest.
+
+One night he was awakened by a noise at that window; he could hardly
+have said what it was like. With a little thrill of the nerves he sat up
+in bed and laid hold of the revolver which, with a forethought most
+commendable in one addicted to the habit of sleeping on the ground floor
+with an open window, he had put under his pillow. The room was in
+absolute darkness, but being unterrified he knew where to direct his
+eyes, and there he held them, awaiting in silence what further might
+occur. He could now dimly discern the aperture--a square of lighter
+black. Presently there appeared at its lower edge two gleaming eyes that
+burned with a malignant lustre inexpressibly terrible! Brading's heart
+gave a great jump, then seemed to stand still. A chill passed along his
+spine and through his hair; he felt the blood forsake his cheeks. He
+could not have cried out--not to save his life; but being a man of
+courage he would not, to save his life, have done so if he had been
+able. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but his spirit was of
+sterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a steady motion that
+seemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right hand, holding the
+pistol. He fired!
+
+Blinded by the flash and stunned by the report, Brading nevertheless
+heard, or fancied that he heard, the wild, high scream of the panther,
+so human in sound, so devilish in suggestion. Leaping from the bed he
+hastily clothed himself and, pistol in hand, sprang from the door,
+meeting two or three men who came running up from the road. A brief
+explanation was followed by a cautious search of the house. The grass
+was wet with dew; beneath the window it had been trodden and partly
+leveled for a wide space, from which a devious trail, visible in the
+light of a lantern, led away into the bushes. One of the men stumbled
+and fell upon his hands, which as he rose and rubbed them together were
+slippery. On examination they were seen to be red with blood.
+
+An encounter, unarmed, with a wounded panther was not agreeable to their
+taste; all but Brading turned back. He, with lantern and pistol, pushed
+courageously forward into the wood. Passing through a difficult
+undergrowth he came into a small opening, and there his courage had its
+reward, for there he found the body of his victim. But it was no
+panther. What it was is told, even to this day, upon a weather-worn
+headstone in the village churchyard, and for many years was attested
+daily at the graveside by the bent figure and sorrow-seamed face of Old
+Man Marlowe, to whose soul, and to the soul of his strange, unhappy
+child, peace. Peace and reparation.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce,
+Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, by Ambrose Bierce
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMBROSE BIERCE, VOL. II ***
+
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